Iliupersis
by LexLuthor13
Summary: The Age of Superheroes ended seven years ago when Superman fled into space without warning. When that happened, the world quieted down, moved on. Heroes and villains faded away. All except one. And high above Metropolis, in his tower, the last super-villain is waiting. Watching. Because one day the Man of Steel will return. And when that happens, Lex Luthor is going to be ready.
1. Foundation

**_Iliupersis_ **(n.):  
1. Lat., 'The Sack of Ilium'. A fragmentary poem, part of the Epic Cycle, composed ca. 7th century BCE. Details the culmination of the decade-long Trojan War, concerning the schemes of Odysseus, the Trojan Horse, and the final downfall of Troy.  
2. A metaphor common at the dawn of the 21st century for any broad-based or significant sociocultural shift in a society, usually assumed to be of destructive implication; can also refer to the 'end of an age' phenomenon. This meaning ttributed to international eco-terrorist "Ra's al Ghul" (real name unknown: see Appendix V), reportedly as he beheld the 1666 Great Fire of London (see Appendix IV, 'The Book of Crime').

* * *

Once, I bought a gun.

To see if I could.

You know, little Saturday night special, a twenty-two. The kind idiots take into liquor stores or their lady friend's bedroom when they think she's been, oh, unfaithful. Few years ago there was a little hole in the wall off Kurt Street, southeast, The Barrel Store. Inventory: you name it. They could sell you a Mauser plucked from the arms of a dead Nazi, probably AKs out the yin-yang. True constitutionalist types who lived in the woods waiting for the day they could take the country back from liberals, the Chinese, the communists, the chi-comms, the asskickers, the shitkickers, and the Methodists.

Rough guys living in a rough world, or one they thought was rough. In their experiences, sure, maybe it was.

It didn't used to be like this. Not at all.

Because, you know, once upon a time my life fell apart.

Long story. Luthor, hormones, teenage pride. A girl was involved, then a boy. The coolest boy you'd ever know.

Shot in the chest. In front of me.

Oh he got better. But he turned away from me. Maybe I turned away from him, unable to stand the sight of someone I put in harm's way. Maybe both, maybe neither. I don't know.

After that happened, I just. Kind of.

Lost it.

My name is Allen O'Neill.

I'm twenty-six years old. And I think I'm near the end of my life.

I made a bad decision once. And then I made it again.

I've been trying to, uh, make up for it. Ever since.

That was eight years ago. Long time to wait. I suppose I've been waiting ever since Jesse died. Ever since…they all left me.  
Sure, infrastructure stayed. I graduated from the University cum laude, pulled graduate work at SUNY. And then I was back. When my parents died.

A car crash, said Inspector Henderson. No cause was ever found. And I didn't press the matter once he told me the police report was inconclusive.

I knew what was going on. Terrified, I shut up.

I got a letter one day, after their funeral. I had been living in the house, doddering around lonesome and tired, like the newspapers say Bruce Wayne is, down Gotham. I was 23 then. Too young. I got a letter, no return address, no signature. It just said, 'keep your chin up and keep quiet. Help is coming.' That was that. At the time I had a pretty good idea where it came from.

In this town, things have a way of…becoming accepted.

You know how it goes.

Almost twenty years ago it was accepted that Superman was here to save us from evil and from ourselves. And in the last five years it's accepted that those days are gone now.

We used to live in an age of superheroes.

A long time ago, when there was still magic in the world, you could walk down Swanderson and see a red blur across the sky. Most magnificent thing you ever saw, and if you blinked you missed it. It was rare—special. Like seeing a celebrity, only more.

It was like seeing God.

I never appreciated the Man of Steel, not at the time. I think that it had something to do with my age. A young idiot, eighteen and full of life and his own ideas on what makes the world work, doesn't have room for a lot of stupid folk heroes in red underpants; zeitgeists for our new millennium. Flying around and doing good. This was not the cynicism we grew up with. Being Metropolitans, you'd think we had it pretty good as kids. Living in the burbs. Always in Superman's shadow. You'd think we'd have known what his battles were. What they were for. Big heady ideas.

Freedom. Peace. Security.

Justice and a good life.

For every living thing.

Eighteen year olds who could barely see past their girlfriend's curves couldn't be expected to know what that felt like. We didn't know what sacrifice meant. And we certainly didn't know what the Man of Steel was giving up to watch this city. Years later, long after I was eighteen and so a little less stupid, I figured this out. What he must have sacrificed to be Superman. I wondered then, and I still do, if there was a life there. A secret he could keep and make his own and for his own reasons.

And then, there was Luthor. Sitting in his tower, casting even bigger shadows. If the sun was in the right place, on the right day in August, the shadow from the LexTower, "miles high" if you believed _NewsTime_, threw itself over the northeast quarter of the city. Over the Murphy Bridge, over the river. Into the burbs. My burbs.

I think about that life quite a lot these days. Living in a brownstone now, away from it all. A very expensive, very empty brownstone, bought with money I didn't earn from a job I was given.

To shut me up.

To keep me silent.

Because when I was younger and stupider ago I got the grand idea to follow Lex Luthor around. He encouraged it. We met on a whim, a cosmic anomaly crossroad in his building, and from there…he took me in.

Gave me meaning. To this day, I'm grateful for that.

What happened later? That was something else.

Anyway.

It's quite a thing, this view. There are two bay windows on the east side of the brownstone, the top floor, just high enough to stare down Fifth Avenue, which terminates, as you know, in the LexTower. Impossibly tall, imposing, black as the ace of spades, staring back at you. I read a news report once, after Gotham City was reopened from its yearlong exile from America. About Luthor. It said, "If people have totem animal, then Lex Luthor's is the great white shark. He has the same focused intensity." Etcetera.

Ever since then I've been looking at his building like an ocean. Something vast and black and terrible, the real mystery inside. And mere humans will never know it.

They'll never know what Lex Luthor is.

Because those days are over now. That Age of Superheroes is gone.

I charted it out once. A graph. I went all Beautiful Mind and drew up the hero logos on legal pads and plotted them out on a corkboard, strings of yarn tacked among them. Lines, chronology, connections.

The Green Lantern was the first to go.

The Flash.

Wonder Woman, the most mysterious. Here one day and gone the next.

Batman next. Nothing to know or show for it either, except for a one-liner from GCN's primetime-news ticker: 'Joker takes boy scouts hostage in Steel Mill, Batman Follows'. That was that. The Scouts were released, GCN told the nation, but Joker was never seen again. Neither was the Batman. Five years.

And you know, who knows what happened to Aquaman.

I grew up with these superheroes on my mind, you see. Even if I never appreciated Superman, I kept up with him and his friends. They were…modern myths. New gods for a new century. What little boy wouldn't love that?

So they were gone.

Superman followed after the Batman's disappearance. Following a ship, a giant metal skull with tentacles, into the night sky.

That was seven years ago. Then nothing happened for a long time. Even Luthor retreated into his tower, refused to give interviews, suspended his usual Sunday Editorials to the _Planet. _He seemed so silent on Superman's disappearance. Silent and diminished.

The sun went down on Metropolis, and on civilisation.

And at the end of it all, there seemed to be just two of us left. Two witnesses to that age, the good old days, the golden days. And I count myself among them, because for one very brief moment—brief matched against the rest of my life—I was a witness to that wonderful, stupid world.

Two of us. Just two. Me, on the ground. And Lex, in the sky. Watching us from his perch. What must he think of all this? I wonder sometimes.

What a world.

And it's all gone now.

Even the weather, the planet, seems to have taken notice. The days are strange and grim, our fair city soaked to its limestone and steel bones with rain and misery. It never used to rain in Metropolis—LexCorp technology saw to the strictest climate controls for optimum urban living at the end of the 20th century.

So, no more sunshine. Just a lot of clouds, and the LexTower, looming above us all, we can't even see its highest point these days. That peak is covered by clouds which seep lower as they spread over New Troy and the bay area. The streets are quiet. Crime went down. Corruption went down.

People moved on.

And yet, I get this feeling sometimes. When I drive into town, staring at the LexTower.

Somewhere up there he's watching.

Us. Me. The skies.

Waiting for the Man of Steel.

Waiting for me too, maybe.

Waiting to come out again.

* * *

**Continued...**


	2. Old Times

**_Black Legion, The_**: (n.) a mythic group of displaced humans adrift at sea and in search of a new home, variably piratical or nomadic in design and intention. Used as bogeyman legend among the Atlantean people and propagated during the Fourth Interregnum in the Orin period (see Appendix III: 'Atlantis and Associated Mythography'). Can also refer to a supervillain movement in the early 21st century, also disseminated as a bogeyman myth among landside superhuman powers (Appendix IXII: The Justice League), and associated with the piratical terrorist codenamed 'Black Manta'.

* * *

**Five Years Ago.  
Luthor.  
**

A thousand miles from Metropolis, out past LexCorp's seasisde research laboratories—repurposed oil rigs retrofitted with all manner of technology to probe both deep and high, marine biology and exobiology, stellar cartography and deep-sea stratigraphy—a man in a pressurised suit and a chrome helmet floated on a chrome platform.

Five years ago, this. Long time to wait. And to think of something to do with your power.

Underneath the chrome helmet and the burning red eyepieces, burning red even in a broad and burning Atlantic summer, the Black Manta scowled.

He was late.

Manta checked his chrono. Looked to the west and whirled the trident around in one hand. The trident he'd taken as war trophy.

From his enemy.

The wind chilled and scoured across him, sudden and unbidden. Atmospheric compensators in the suit shielded him, kept him guarded and away. Away from the world, away from the enemy. Away from feeling or thought or touch.

By choice.

The wind whipped again. A purple flash near him and an electric sizzle, shaping into a man.

It burned brightly for a second and Manta readjusted his eyepieces filtration to compensator. It burned, and then faded.

Luthor, in a black trenchcoat, glowing purple and green underneath, stood scowling at the Black Manta.

"Well," Manta said. "Old times."

"A bygone relic," Luthor said and made a face at Manta. Richly condescending. "Old school teleport technology, barely worth scrap."

"Your facility is ready?"

Luthor smiled. "It's an older one, but it works for you."

"And Aquaman is there?"

"What's left of him, yes."

"Good," Manta said. He pressed a switch on one neon gauntlet and a green bubble sizzled around him. "I'll take you down."

Manta banged the hilt of the trident against the platform—twelfth generation Nth metal, stable up to a thousand atmospheres and a million degrees—and it descended silently into the sea, that dark mystery.

Manta and Luthor reappeared in a city. Subterreanean. Suboceanic. Empty, heavy, fetid air closed in around them, artificial, obnoxious sunlight above them. Artificial skyscrapers lining artificial streets. Not a body in sight or screaming child or errant dog to offend the eye.

Luthor looked around and his mouth crooked into a scowl. "He's done a man's work, I'll give him that."

"He says all he's waiting for is your go-ahead."

Luthor looked up at the fake Empire State Building. Blocks down stood a fake Hancock Tower. This city, you see, was all. And none.

"Let's worry about transference later down the road. Where is he?"

Manta rapped the trident's hilt on the ground once more.

A moment passed.

Then a green-electric sizzle, not unlike Luthor's own energy field. Burning into fake asphalt in a tripartite pattern, three lobes connected with single lines in the shape on the earth letter V.

The sigil of the world computer.

At the lowest lobe, a chrome and Nth skeleton apparated from nothing. Eyes burning green, claw hands clasped behind its back, its head high and disdainful of biologicals. It didn't have to tell you. You just knew.

Brainiac arrived.

"Speak, Luthor."

"Show me the bodies," Manta said. Low and livid.

Brainiac waved one claw hand. Another electric green sizzle near him, and a pile of corpses appeared.

Luthor looked bored. Looked at the artificial city and, intermittently, at the pile of bodies before him.

Green Lantern on the bottom, desiccated and sprawled, Hal Jordan's saddened dead face staring at Luthor from a shredded domino mask. The Martian Manhunter, in pieces. Wally West, the Flash, an equally sad face staring slack-jawed in Brainiac's direction. Wonder Woman lying on top of the martian, sprawled and sacrificial, her head staring into the city, her suit mangled, burned. A dagger buried hilt-deep between her breasts. And lying over Wonder Woman, headless and demolished and broken as the rest:

Aquaman.

Black Manta stalked toward the pile. Flipped his trident in one hand and jammed it sideways into Aquaman's neck. Started twisting.

Costumes shredded, torn, destroyed. Burnt, ripped. Bodies limp, lying unnaturally on top of each other, hips twisted, legs and arms missing or stripped of flesh and costume. Gruesome, even by Luthor's lofty standards. Bones.

And memories.

"And Batman?"

"Unknown," Brainiac said.

Manta said: "What about Superman?"

"What about him." Luthor scoffed and started pacing. "He's adrift and hopeless. He'll stay that way."

Manta, still twisting Aquaman's head from his body: "You're so sure?"

"I am," Luthor said. "And what is that you're doing exactly, David?"

Manta stopped twisting. The neck had popped clear of the rest in a wet, slow snap. Manta kinked the trident to one side and shoved against the mass of the whole pile.

And then he brought the trident up. Aquaman's face, jaw loose and almost falling off, eyes rolled back, glossed and sunken, skin white and tight, hair matted and darkened either from blood or rigor, Luthor had stopped caring which.

"War trophy," Manta said. "Now. You wanted the meeting. So go."

Luthor regarded Manta coolly for a moment.

Brainiac didn't move. His eyes, Nth shutters that passed for eyelids on a biological, narrowed. Luthor spoke:

"This was part one of a plan to transform the face of this planet. To kill its old gods and remake ourselves in a better image. Phase two begins right now, with us. Because, gentlemen, you see I lied a moment ago. Superman will not stay gone. It's not in his nature. He will come back. Oh yes he'll return. And when he does, I intend to be there. I'm going to reduce this planet and its cities to ashes and I'm going to make him watch. And then I'm going to kill him. Thus always to the enemies of Lex Luthor. Gentlemen, this is my mercy. Stand with me as I do this. Give me the lands of this earth, and David the seas. And Brainiac, for you - all the stars in the sky. Do we have an arrangement?"

Brainiac watched Manta.

"For old times' sake," Manta said. "I'll get the Legion on board. Your alien friend comes back, I want a piece."

"Agreed," the world computer finally said.

* * *

**Two Years Ago.  
Lex and Berkowitz.  
**

The LexTower stood silver and gleaming, obnoxious, against a midday haze. Its topmost floors contained Luthor's executive office, a sprawling, sparse affair in deep purples and greens. The western wall was all glass, six panes mounted into the façade, ceiling to floor, perfectly square. Between the wall and the entrance, double doors, also glass, sat Luthor's desk. As old as time and cannibalised from the remains of a redwood to be in the shape of the White House's own Resolute Desk. At night, or when he wanted to, Luthor activated a small remote which polarised weather and reality beyond the glass and converted the panes into wide-screen visual monitors. Could be GCN, could be WLEX, could be surveillance footage from the men's room. Technology and his building were privy to his whims.

Right now it was surveillance footage. Of Metropolis' illegitimate six term mayor, the tax-cheating wastrel Francis P. Berkowitz, esquire. A portly, worrisome man, aviator glasses loose on his nose, ill-fit to a suit, dowdy in a trenchcoat, pushing his way into the lobby. Making a fake little frown and storming forward. The concierge at the desk perked up and saw him, and knew him, and simply held out a hand. He's waiting for you, Luthor had lip-read.

Bird's-eye surveillance in the elevator. Berkowitz looking down at his phone, sending a text to some discriminating aide. Checking his Seiko for the time. Always somewhere to be.

Luthor sat back in his chair and supported his head on a steepled arm. The King Lear look.

Teschmacher on the intercom: "Mr Luthor, Frank Berkowitz is on his way up."

"Thank you, Eve."

The thing about going into Luthor's office was that you could see him. A few years ago the entrance foyer and Teschmacher's desk had been architecturally cramped. Painted in harsh beige and with a single, lonesome seat across from Teschmacher you could wait in if for some reason Luthor wasn't in his office. Few years ago though, after one of his customary adventures with the Man of Steel, renovation was in order. The glass double-doors remained, etched with an art-deco variation on the company logo—a single capital L in a bevelled circle. Teschmacher's desk was expanded, the ceiling raised, the square footage increased. Previously, the third and fourth tenants on the floor had been Luthor's private washroom, done in priceless and impossible green marble; and a private laboratory, to which no one save Luthor and Mercy Graves had access. In a report to the Board of Directors Luthor attributed this to 'new advances in the field of miniaturisation and physical expansion into tesseracted hyperspace'—by which he meant moving his lab, and whatever private science lay within, into a pocket dimension.

So it was more spacious. You stepped out of an elevator coated in brass, and stepped forward, Teschmacher and her desk to your right, an easy and harmless smile on her face and she said, 'he's expecting you'.

She always said that.

So Berkowitz stepped forward. His grip tightened around the briefcase and he looked through the glass doors.

Luthor was sitting in his chair, behind his desk, reclined. Staring out at an opaque afternoon and the sprawling city underneath it.

Berkowitz pushed a door open. Kept walking.

The chair rotated around slowly.

Berkowitz sat.

"Well?"

Berkowitz took a deep breath.

"Did you ever wonder why I brought you back?"

"Um," Berkowitz said. Immediately his survivalism kicked in, that amazing capacity for self-deception and toolery, and he devised an instant plan to save himself. "You run this town. Everyone knows it. You always have—and it's gotten worse—"

"Worse?"

"More pronounced," he corrected. "In the last few years. You know what it's like on the streets. Tell me how you did it. You never did before—I want to know now. I want to know what made them all go away. How you got Superman off-planet. Where the Batman went. Let me guess. You recycled one of your old plots. Something that got you elected President all those years ago."

Luthor allowed a little scowl and zoned Berkowitz out and thought: _you little prick, you don't know the first fucking thing I did, you think I was trying to save the world with the Presidency, get real you sh-  
_

"You made yourself king again. Gave their kids scholarships. Gave their dads jobs and pensions. Gave me a job and a purpose again. It pains me to say it, Lex, but you…saved us."

The shadow in the chair frowned. "The city is very dear to me, for all its problems. And the way the rest of the world was going, well, I couldn't take the thought of a Metropolis burning with crime and death. Someone had to assert himself."

Berkowitz leant forward. "I know. I'm saying, keep me in. Please. I want forty more years. I know you, Lex, I know what you do to people when they're no longer useful."

The shadow frowned again. "Busy life. Keep swimming."

"I've been trying to figure that out for years," Berkowitz said. "How you must sleep at night. What you had to do to get where you are. The bodies. The lies. The mind you must have." Berkowitz sat back and made a disagreeable face; the lines creased across his mouth and his forehead wrinkled. "I was in awe of you. All those years ago."

"You were terrified of me," Luthor said. "And your terror cost me my life, my fortune, and my good name."

Berkowitz let out a nervous chuckle. Wiped the sweat from his face with one greasy sausage of a hand. "You make it sound as if you stayed in prison. You were out the next morning, what's to complain about?"

Luthor went to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. "Twenty years behind us or not. You made the Alien one of your cops, and he threw me in prison. Me." Quieter: "I brought you back. So you could see it, Frank."

"See what?"

"A world without him. And how insignificant your role in it truly is."

Berkowitz made a face.

"It was a response to age. One grey day you wake up and you see yourself slowing down. You look in the mirror and wonder who that hunched, wrinkled, thing is staring back. You feel it. And you decide to make the most of what you have left. Battle after battle, fight after fight, dead civilian after dead civilian. Until Superman has it one day and flies off. Is that—the story you've heard, Frank?"

"Sure."

Luthor scoffed at turned back to the window.

Ten minutes passed.

"Oh. Forty more years," Luthor said. "You want to live to ninety? What retirement system pays public employees to that ripe end?"

"Ninety," Berkowitz said. "You want more."

"I could live until the end of time, Frank. I would."

"Mind if I ask why?"

"Because he will."

Simple enough.

Berkowitz threw a hand up. "You said he was dead!"

"Is he?"

Then Berkowitz was out of his chair. He had gone from zero to flip-out in two seconds. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Lex! What the hell am I doing here? I should've never let you talk me into this! What in God's ass are you even up to?"

"I'm hoping," Luthor said. "You'll see."

"Yeah yeah," Berkowitz said and waved a hand. He idled away from the desk, pacing, shoving one hand in his pocket, using the other to gesture. "You know, if you would just talk like a, like sane person? It'd save us all a lot of trouble." Then he was quiet. He leant on Luthor's desk, his glasses slid to the end of his bulbous nose, and his jowls flapped as he choked out a sentence:

"Tell me, Lex," Berkowitz said. Out of nowhere he conjured a smile, fake and easy. "Everyone knows your dirty fucking laundry, Lex, just tell me. Tell me and I'll shut up and you can keep doing that voodoo that you do. There was one reporter at the _Planet_ that came close, if I remember. Then he washed up on-shore, headless, nutless and dead. Olsen, was it? What did you build under the sea? I'd like to know. And I'd like to know why our superheroes are now dead and gone. Tell me."

Luthor's eyes narrowed. His head craned slowly forward. His head, its baldness, stark raving shiny, gleamed off the setting sun. "You were the benefactor of a leaked plan. I told you what I told you, because you would do nothing. Nothing at all, Frank. And you proved me right. I wish you hadn't. I would have loved to see your fat ass running to the alien and telling him what I was up to. What was going to happen to him—to all of them."

"Which was?"

Luthor spread his hands in an offertory. "Why does it matter now? My enemies are dead or gone. In one week I rid myself and this world of them for good. For the better. Look at us. Look at me."

"Exactly. Why do we even still exist? Crime, non-existent thanks to your Team Luthor gang of idiots. That statue of you in Centennial Park. And no superheroes to waste your time on anymore." Berkowitz sighed.

"The facts of life," Luthor said. "The problem with surviving, Frank, is that you survive. Alone."

Berkowitz frowned.

Luthor stood. "Does that answer your question?"

"Um."

"Why did you come here, Frank?"

Silence.

"You thought you could get me to talk? To you? Thought you could get some info from the horse's mouth? And in so doing, make yourself invaluable. You cockroach. I talk to people who deserve my attention, and I respect things that deserve my respect. You're a dog wearing a sweater."

Then Luthor pointed behind Berkowitz. "Get out."

Without noise, without protest, sunken and little, Berkowitz fled.

Luthor scowled and shook his head. Pulled his mobile from his pocket and dialled the only number he needed.

Ring. Ring.

"Lex."

"Jesse," Luthor said and smiled. You could always feel a smile through the phone. "I trust you're nearby."

"Coffee down the block, what's up."

"How's Alex?"

"He's good, sir, thank you for asking."

"My pleasure," Luthor said. "Berkowitz will be walking out in five minutes. You know what to do."

"You got it."

Down below, among the plebs, Berkowitz sent his car away, "Get outta here, I need to walk," and stalked up Fifth Avenue, toward City Hall. A Sundollers Coffee lay ahead, across the street, the intersection of Fifth and Moore.

Berkowitz bundled his trench coat around him. A chill wind scoured down Moore. He glanced up only once to see someone—a boy? Sliding out from one of the outdoor tables, buttoning a denim jacket, throwing a hoodie up over his face and his aviators and checking his phone. Rifling through his wallet for a tip or something. Berkowitz flipped out his phone.

A hand on his arm. Strong and young and stopping him dead.

"Your Honor—"

"I'm sorry son, I'm terribly—"

"So am I."

"Huh—"

"Mister Luthor sends his apologies."

Then Berkowitz's side exploded. Pain. Cold metal pain, a seizure in his spine, a yelp; he fell on his back. Staring at the sky.

Jesse grabbed his cane and limped away down Moore.

Years before, Luthor had shot Jesse through the stomach, a lazy shot that shredded his spine and nearly paralysed him. Oh he got better, as so few do, but he'd taken to using a cane these past few years as a steady form of insurance. How like a geriatric, he often thought. He used the cane as an affectation. A reminder of what he'd lost, next to what he'd gained. A new lease on life courtesy of Lex Luthor. A young man, he was. But these days, with everything being what it was, he felt slower. Older and bitter. Years and thousands in physical therapy. A long and inglorious story.

In a back alley behind another Sundollers, he dialed 911. And started acting.

"Team Luthor, this is Agent Reeve, how can I assist you?"

"OhmygodIthinkIjustsawadeadbo dyonFifthAvenuePLEASEyouhave tosendsomeoneRIGHTNOWohmygod Idon'tthinkhewasmoving—OHMYGOD!"

"Sir, sir, calm down, we have three units en route right now. Do you wish to remain anonymous?"

"Y-y-yesthankyou."

Then he disconnected the line.

Redialed Luthor.

"It's done, sir."

"Good. Stop in later, won't you."

"You got it."

Disconnect.

Jesse Wright stood for a moment in the alley. He regarded the cane distantly, then tossed it, caught it, and stuck it back at one side.

He walked freely down the street toward the Tower. A smile on his face and hope on his mind.

For once.

_**Continued...**_


	3. Come In

**Excerpt:**  
Iris West, _An Encyclopedia of Galactic History_ (Earth: Keystone Press, 1,000,000), p.756:

"…In the year 2525 of the Paran Katar epoch, comparable to the Earth year 2012, the world computer Brainiac ravaged the planet Thanagar and left it a lifeless husk in space. As was his custom, he arrived, absorbed the planet's physical data, assimilated it into his memory banks, and destroyed the original so as to prevent data corruption or the obsolescence of his own newly-acquired records.

Numerous sources place this event as contemporaneous with similar data events on Rann, Zamaron, Okaara, the anti-matter planet of Qward, and Oa—all of whom are now withdrawn from current star-charts, contain no colonists, and have been untraveled for centuries. Corroborating accounts by independent research agencies, as of this writing, have indicated no survivors, and no evidence has come forward in refutation…"

* * *

**Jesse and Lex.**

**Two years ago.**

"Stop in won't you."

That's what he said.

So you do. With nervous arms you clench in your pockets so they don't shake, with a shiver down your back, with steel plates where certain vertebrae used to be, you stop in. At the LexTower.

You think you're angry at him. Certainly you should be. Guy shot you through the stomach for no reason. For existing. For being a little different or for being Allen's friend or for something to do with Superman.

You don't even know anymore.

But you still take his paychecks. That's something. Actually they're not even paychecks. An intermediary of his drops nine thousand in cash in a dead drop on Morrison Avenue, down near the old STAR Labs building, and every so often you limp down and pull out a certain red brick on the fire escape and check for your nine thousand, all there, the way it should be.

You started doing his dirty work when you got out of the hospital. All those years and physical therapy sessions ago.

He had people needed killing.

You just tried not to think about it.

And you wish to keep not thinking about it.

About what happens if one of them fights back. What then? What if one of Luthor's enemies has physical strength and doesn't get killed by the vaguely derelict twenty-something with a cane, the one pressing a gun at the back of their head.

You think, and you plan. And you arm yourself—you steel yourself—against the day that happens.

Luthor won't be able to stop it. He won't protect you. It's not his nature. He's a thrower; he'll find a bus and toss you under it.

So toss him first.

The elevator doors ping and slide open. Teschmacher ahead on one side, typing away. You go past and don't say a damn word to her. Push the glass door open with the bottom of your cane. Very House.

He looks up and smiles.

And says: "I can take your limp away."

* * *

**Berkowitz.**

**Seven years ago.**

He woke up slowly and did the math. A hospital room. Bright and obnoxious and smelly. The good kind of smelly, chlorine and disinfectant and starch and cotton and paper and steel, rubbing, burning, itching. Everything was on fire.

His eyes shot open. His stomach burned.

"You've been shot through the chest, Mister Mayor."

He tried to speak and dry air came through.

"Have a drink." The same voice, easy and feminine.

A hand and a paper cup, cool with water, at his lips, tipping it up, the water going in. Drinking hurt. Muscle use hurt.

He lay back on the nest of pillows.

"Uuuhhhh."

He opened his eyes again. Everything was blurry.

"Here," the woman said. "Your glasses, sir."

She slid them on slowly and for a moment Berkowitz just took it all in. A hospital room yes. Wide, expansive, every other word that meant space. White and glowing, reflecting, hurting.

"Where am I?"

"Saint Mark's Hospital," the other one said, low and mean. "You've been comatose for some time."

"How much time."

"Eight years. Give or take."

"Fuuuu…"

"I'm afraid you were shot."

"Past. Tense."

"I'm also afraid that your assailant chomped down on hydrogen cyanide as Metropolis' finest were corralling him."

Berkowitz sighed and looked at the ceiling. Dingy drop-tiles stained brown with water leakage. Not inspiring. "Where. Where is this? Guatemala?"

"Ah, Santa Prisca," the man said. "I had Team Luthor escort you out of harm's way as soon as it was feasible. Here you can rest and recover away from intrusive media. Here you can rebuild."

Berkowitz's vision cleared. He propped himself on an elbow and pressed a hand to his temple. It burned too. An aching, reaching, undying headache. The pain of pains. He sniffled. Coughed a bit, a wheezy asthmatic affair. Looked ahead.

Sitting in a plastic chair, dollar ninety-nine at Big Bargains down the road, in a five thousand dollar Houndstooth—

"Oh shit," Berkowitz wheezed. "You."

Luthor stood and approached. Stopped at the foot of the bed. Checked a thumb toward the door and the nurse slunk away. He waited a moment longer, waited for the door to close and to be alone with his enemy. Then he spoke.

"I had you shot, Frank. I was going to murder you, but it seems my assassin just wasn't up to the task. Imagine that."

"God's sake why Lex. Why—"

"Why?" Luthor asked it and seemed surprised he was being asked such a ridiculous question. He stalked to Berkowitz's side and throttled him, human hands tightening around the fat man's throat from underneath ox-hide leather gloves. "You simpering garbage. You just had to cling to life didn't you."

He let go. Walked to the door.

"Well now you get to help me, Frank. Or I'll have to kill you better next time."

"What. What do you want help…"

"You're going to legitimise my hostile takeover of Metropolis, Frank. The hero mayor who survived his own death only to return to the city he loves in its darkest hour. To save it. Does this sound sensible, Frank? It better. Because in about, oh, three days, the time it takes you to make a full recovery, everything you used to know will become nothing at all."

Berkowitz's eyes grew wide. "What are you up to, Lex?"

"I decided to finally get serious about my life's work, Frank. And I've invited some of my old friends to take part in the magic."

* * *

**Lex.**

**Five years ago.**

He was standing at the window. Thinking. A slim puddle of brandy left in the snifter, stuck in one hand, the other hand shoved in a pocket. He was sneering at the city. He was actually sneering at it.

And behind him a gaunt man in a tattered black suit stepped forward, messed black hair and loose spectacles and humourless face—

"Your informant," the man said. Smiled thinly. "I hope he won't get wet feet."

Luthor turned.

"Jesse is a broken vessel. Malleable and loyal, but broken. Despite this, he functions well on the street. He understands the plebeians in ways you and I simply don't."

The man in the black suit looked at the photo. "Where do I start?"

Luthor half-smiled. "Keep your ears out. He'll find her and then you can do what you want with her." Then he turned to the man in the suit. "I don't care how you do it, but send a message. In the old days, the Mafia used to cut the fingers off rival corpses, then mail what was left to their enemies—a sign that they intended to take everything from them. Piece by piece."

The man nodded. "The old Legion," he said in an easy, creepy voice. "Together again. For old times, I presume?"

"How about for terror, Jonathan?"

He straightened his posture at that point. A thin and prideful smile came on him and he said merely, "Okay."

And Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, the god of Fear, strolled out of LexCorp in broad daylight to go kill a girl.

He started laughing, and laughed even harder when passers-by couldn't understand what was so funny.

* * *

**The WGBS Evening News with Cat Grant:**

"Good evening and thank you for joining us. Our top story tonight continues: the Whitehorse High School bombing. Officials are mum yet as to the exact details but WGBS has learned that the building has been judged a total loss. Fire crews and local law enforcement are at the scene now running clean-up. The Mayor's office released the following statement…"

Crane.

Five years ago.

So he started big. If it was the old methodology Luthor wanted, and it was, then Crane supplied it. Fulfilled his end of the bargain. At least it was a good opening salvo. On the off-chance, he thought, this O'Neill character is still in the city, hiding somewhere, then he'll flip on WGBS or GCN or some other televisual rag—and see it.

That's the way it always went. The usefulness of media, Crane thought, totaled surprise and freak-out on his prey's behalf.

He made the old Teller Paper Mill building his hideaway, three blocks south of Whitehorse's burning husk, and sat there now, hours later, thinking about it. For one, he didn't used to think of them as prey. And he wasn't quite sure when he had started thinking of them that way. Probably after the Griggs'. And of course Doctor Elliot…

That was it.

The day they all died.

After that, there was nothing. Nothing for the Scarecrow to do with his time and his terror, not after Batman and the Joker were never seen again. The night of the Steel Mill whatever-it-was, everyone took to calling it. The people he'd spent his adult life chasing—harassing, stalking, murdering—finally died in one last fire fight. With him. It was, he had to confess, magnificent.

They all burned so bright.

Everything changed after that.

There were no…oh, no villains or heroes anymore. No clients or hits or lists or jobs.

Ten years ago the old world died.

Maybe Crane missed it a little bit.

He pulled out his handlink and brought up the info Luthor had provided. A lame driving licence photo alongside vitals and a brief rundown. Sarah Kendall nee' Andrews, married to some lame accountant in the city, starlet in High School—who wasn't—now ballooned out to maximum uselessness and laden down with two infant tax write-offs.

The burlap over his face chafed these days and he was constantly pulling at it, readjusting, trying to work with the annoyance.

He looked out a broken window, at Whitehorse one last time. The fire crews were rolling up now and unhooking their gear.

Somewhere in Metropolis, this O'Neill was watching the news about this. And shitting himself.

Crane found himself hoping for that, actually. Salivating over the thought of it. A chance to inspire fear. A last hurrah at terror.

Then-

A dark shadow leapt into the night.

* * *

**Last year.**

**_The Daily Star_, 'When a Problem Comes Around', by Allen O'Neill, Editor at-large:**

"Where is Superman? A valid question—not a good one, because there are no good questions anymore—but a valid one. One we're entitled to ask, and the answer to which we'd be within our rights to know. True, since Superman's been gone our streets have been kept safe by the ever-scurrilous forces of Team Luthor, our Beloved Billionaire's private goon squad.

Which is of course exactly what they are. A goon squad. One instituted For the Duration of the Emergency.

What emergency, exactly? When did our fair city become a gleaming Mecca with its share of problems? Oh sure it has probably always had problems. But if there's one thing the last five years have taught us, it is most certainly this: the brighter the picture, the darker the negative. Look at Gotham, look at what's left of Blüdhaven, and look at Hub City. These are wastrels, not cities you would schedule your already-precious vacation time to visit. These are ugly stepsisters. Deformed members of the family you keep locked in the basement. And that is precisely what we have done. Sitting here on our golden thrones and our outlandish standards of living—we have come to look down on anyone that does not resemble us.

We have come to loathe The Different.

And who can blame us? It was always going to happen this way. Given the way that last half-decade has spun itself into our minds? It was bound to happen. Let the rest of the world rot. Let a couple of two-bit hoods and some dubiously-existent nut in a Bat costume waste each other in our sister city to the south. Let the world-famous Flash rip Kansas apart in a final conflagration with his time-travelling and opposite-colored nemesis. Even the great Hal Jordan, Air Force professional and debonair incarnate could not escape the vengeful spirit of an alien menace from, as the old sci-fi penny dreadful tells you, Beyond the Moon!

It was bound to happen.

We live in a silly world. Men and Superman and Wondrous Women went about their lives with infinite superiority and look where that got them.

A long time ago, this newspaper's competitor named the appearance of Superman as the dawn of the Age of Superheroes. It was nice and fantastical and for a good countless while we enjoyed a weird, wonderful, picaresque existence in our fair city. We could afford to be roguish and fun. We had someone looking out for us.

And now he is gone. Superman left us. No fight to the finish with an escaped mental patient in a purple suit for our superhero. No space-bending adventure here.

He was here one day, and then gone. And that was that. And for a long time I think I speak for all of us to say that we were pretty messed up about that. Whatever Superman thought of us mere mortals, we certainly thought pretty well of him. And certainly we warranted more than a non-goodbye.

Maybe that is an unreasonable thing to do. Maybe the oddity of the whole situation was compounded when LexCorp and its magnanimous Chief Executive ordered an urban revitalisation and, fully two years into Superman's absence, the reinstitution of none other than Team Luthor.

For our younger readers, Team Luthor existed as the private branch and mailed fist of Lex Luthor for years after his titular company's very public IPO in the late 1980s. If Superman wasn't around, which back then was quite often as it turned out, you merely had to look up and there was Team Luthor, gliding to the rescue invariably and gallantly in their gilded costumes and robotic demeanour.

Of course times changed. We all grew up. Glorious Leader Lex Luthor did too. And Superman—well no one ever really knew if he could age. We suspected he did. And we hoped he thought of us not as ants but as brilliant grasshoppers, to use the eastern parlance. Grasshoppers to be trained. Built. Developed. Helped.

And now that he's gone, what do we have?

All this, and Lex Luthor, too. The last game in town, in case you hadn't noticed or had been living in a cave for five years.

Our problem, once the Man of Steel upped sticks, was twenty-four crime free months—and then the resurgence of criminals so much more clever than before. And then Luthor came out from his exile and saved us. If you want to put it that way.

That was our problem, and the lesson, Luthor supplied it himself: when a problem comes along—solve it.

Revolutionary and simple because of that. Maybe we're just jaded after all. Maybe we ought to just suck it up, dispense with these high notions we have of ourselves and our city. Superiority is the problem. See above."

* * *

**Crane.**

**Five years ago.**

Oh she wasn't so little anymore.

A little thrill overcame him. Not a big thrill. Not raving hysterics and maniacal cackling. Those days just weren't in style anymore. But a little thrill. A chill up his back and the slow and easy smile. Smiling at the idiot girl in a tattered pantsuit strapped—chained—to the table before him.  
"Sara Andrews, I presume?"

One swollen, bloody eye of hers cracked open.

"Oh I know all about you, Sara-wara. Luthor needs you alive."

She tried so hard to speak and it just came out lame and airy and weak and futile. Sick and sweet and wonderful and disgusting.

"Luth. Luthor. Luthor?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes. But you know all about him too, don't you my lovely? Yes, Lex Luthor, our old friend who swooned away the love of your life with grand promises and money and dreams of a life better without you, oh yes, that's the one. Tell me it burns in your chest, Sara-warah. Tell me you were afraid to lose that boy to Luthor's whims, to his power. You know, physical love isn't the only kind of love there is. How do we take our love, my lovely, oh we covet! Yes we are greedy, gaping chimps at the watering hole, eking out our own and strong-arming the rest out for ourselves. We are possessive and you too were possessive, Sarah, were you not."

She was hyperventilating now, struggling plainly and vainly against the chains, tightening up, tightening up, oh yes they were. He was going full-on Poe on her.

He got in her face and drew a skeletal hand down her chin.

"Do you think just because you want something, that makes it yours? Wishing is not ownership, my lovely. I have spent days deconstructing your mind. Now Sara-wara my dear sweet woman, tell me what I want to know. Tell m where I can find Luthor's old protégé, the boy Allen O'Neill. And tell me what I really, really want to know in my heart of hearts my lovely, tell me. Tell me what that stupid, simpering, weak-willed brain of yours is thinking."

Her hyperventilation went supersonic. Crane wrote a brief note on the back of his hand, research is one's best friend in situations like this, after all. He produced a burlap sack from his jacket pocket and pulled it over his face.

He got in her face again and screamed. A man in a tattered suit and a burlap face to ordinary morons. To her, a burning skeleton, eyes the colour of embers, curving, snaking fangs piercing the mouth, maggots, roaches, fleas, flies, tarantulas skittering all over the face.

"Tell me what you FEAR!"

Sarah died screaming.

* * *

**Allen.**

**Now.**

You come home.

You click on the lamp and it's the only light in the apartment, sure there are others, nicer ones, really nice ones with gold filigree around the bases, Stiffel lamps on your dining room sideboard cast in solid bronze and weighing about the size of an Army Halftrack each. But you like the standing lamp by the door. Your table is there, with the little Joe Camel ashtray on it, the kind with a resting bridge across the centre, they don't make those anymore. Deep blue and with a colour cartoon of Joe in the tray, giving you a thumbs-up and a caption saying you should 'Smoke On!'

Big Tobacco gave up on subtlety a while ago.

So you turn on the lamp. It's a good lamp. An antique, from your dear old Anglican grandma who had it when she came over from Dover and decided coastal Metropolis would be a nice, quiet place to live out life from under flats and Tony Blair and gas prices so high your head'd explode. 'Course, she's dead now.

They all are.

You flop down in the Eames chair by the bay window and you stare out at Grosvenor Street. Right off Swanderson—the good end of Swanderson, not the bad end, the one out past the Big Boy and the old Bridal shoppe that's really more a drug pass-through these days.

You rub your eyes and you think, how did it come to this? You'd be upset about it, ordinarily. Everyone else is, or does get, when this kind of zeitgeist—that's the Daily Star talking for you—shows up. Rears its ugly head. Pops into existence like so much Athena and forces you to take a hard look at the universe and all its little inequities.

All the little ways you destroyed your world, Allen.

Sarah, dead. Your parents, disappeared. As good as dead.

The day Lex Luthor took over Metropolis.

All of these moments. Frozen in time. In your mind.

You think of that as you sit in the Eames chair, Allen.

You think of people you never knew. Lois Lane and Superman.

All the lives lost, all those moments there near the end when they didn't know the end was near. How many more times do we breathe? How many more times do we sneeze? Kiss someone we love? Frown at something we hate? Sneer at someone…because they look funny. Gape and shake our heads because something we see is scandalous. The list goes on. The memories don't.

They're lost. Even to the people that lived them. Lost to time and memory, even the way you recall them is somehow less than what it should be. Those moments are lessened in recounting, when they used to be so much more.

You think the world is like this now, that it was always this way. Always this moody, introspective, always this sedate. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe there was a time when there was colour and life to this town. Colour and life to you, Allen. Maybe you were young and fun and brilliant once, and every day was fabulous because it was new and because you grabbed it and made it yours.

You used to be so brilliant.

You sit in the Eames chair, and you stew. And when Lex Luthor walks in, because you've left the door open, and he starts talking with a slick smile on his face?

You just look at him.

"Lex," you say and it doesn't even sound like your voice.

"It wasn't difficult to find you, you know. I made some of my old contacts run around in circles, finding you by proxy. I thought your old High School getting bombed, maybe your old girlfriend's corpse hanging from the Reeves Bridge—maybe that would have drawn you out of the woodwork, but no, you stayed here, you stayed put. I'm almost impressed."

You nod.

"Good boy," he says. "You've made quite a little nest for yourself."

"I had some help."

He smiles and he says he knows that.

"You really drove Virgil Brinkman into the ground. I was quite astonished to see it. Think what else you could have done had you gone into public service."

You nod. "Yeah. Well. Now the _Star_ gives me a hundred ninety thousand dollars a year to write an opinion column millions of people read, Lex. I didn't need your help."

Luthor lets out a single huff of air, a chuckle. "And yet it's my name on the masthead. And you took the job anyway."

"I had no choice."

You think back. You remember the brightly lit subbasement Luthor led you into to watch him shoot your best friend through the spine. Shoot him and so stick it to Superman—smugly guy that he is.

Your best friend. First friend you made at the University. Years ago.

Or maybe it wasn't that long. Time gets funny sometimes.

Your only friend. Who looked up to Lex. Who loved Lex. And loved you, too.

And Lex shot him.

Jesse Wright. Kind of name they have in romance novels, or badly written ones about teen-agers and vampires. A good kid but with the weight of the world in his shoulders. A gleam in his eye.

So he was a contradiction. And when Lex shot him, and Superman couldn't save his life, a mighty tree had fallen. Had broken Allen for years afterward.

Mostly you blamed Superman.

But in your heart you blamed Luthor.

And so after that, you ran. As far away as you could.

And then. With your tail between your legs, you came back from Keystone. You accepted the Star's offer, because that's what people do. They take jobs, they get responsible. They grow up and become comfortable in suits and they see a teenager one day and wonder why and how they were ever like that.

You fear getting old, Allen. You fear getting old, and becoming like Luthor.

You go to the fridge and pull the whisky from the top, dusty and untouched, and offer it to Luthor. He puts up a hand and says no. You open it and rink. And you keep drinking.

"You only have as much choice as you believe, Allen. Control and perception. Don't you think you-"

"Oh no you don't," you say. "You don't get to do that. Not to me."

He's silent, then. For a long minute.

"Okay. Let's be frank."

"Alright."

"Come work for me." He says it with such pleasantness. "At the Tower. Team Luthor."

"Not for all the idiots in all the idiot villages, Lex."

"When you were young, I offered you anything you wanted and all you had to do was come into my world willingly. Today I renew that offer."

"No."

He looks at me for a moment and cracks a smile. "Whatever happened to that boy? Cartwright was it?"

"Jesse."

"Right."

"You shot him."

"I paid his hospital bill," Luthor says and his eyes narrow. "I was told he got better."

"Really." You lay it on thick. "I heard different. What have you been up to, Lex? Stuck up there in your tower while the superheroes all died off. Were you watching. Did you make this all happen?"

He purses his lips and says, "Life undeserving of life, Allen. I don't destroy people. Not anymore. People...have a way of destroying themselves anyway."

"Why are you here." You say it so wearily, so lamely. Almost whining. Which is interesting: you self-effacing prick, you. Isn't your whole life now basically whining?

You look back at him.

"Years ago, when I was President, I had to good fortune to direct every bit of spy-tech we had at our old friends, the superheroes. I learned everything there was to know. Identity, you know, Allen, is more than some mask you wear to feel good. It's the lies you tell yourself so you can keep living. Figuring out which lies you like and which you don't is part of the process. Merely a matter of which lie you find more tenable. I learned who they were, Allen. The kind of men and women they purported to be. Do you know what I did then?"

You're silent. Scared. For some reason.

"We killed them all, Allen. We murdered them. Magnificently."

Oh.

Oh Christ.

"The government," Luthor said. "Doesn't touch me because, frankly, going to war with this planet's superhumans every Wednesday is the least dangerous thing I do with my time. And now look at this world. Free from their kind. Free from duty, and respect, and cause and effect. I provided a paradigm shift whereby the people of this city and this planet didn't have to wait for some Superman to come save them. I gave them their lives back. Put hope in their hands. I did the same for you once and you rejected it after a time. When you decide, Allen, what it is you really want from this life? I'll be ready to listen."

And then Luthor was gone.

* * *

_**Continued...**_


	4. Genetics

**Excerpt:  
**Luthor, Lex. "The Men of Yesterday": The Metropolis _Daily Star:_

"Truly, who among us could have guessed that, to use a line from Wells, in the final years of this century we would have become so dependent on our friends in the superhuman community. How burdensome their wars on our behalf—how bothersome our simple human concerns must have seemed to super men and hawk men and wondrous women. Where were our manners? Where was decency? We probably should have stopped and breathed and asked ourselves these questions a long time ago. But we didn't. We let them down. And we let ourselves down worst of all. And now they are gone…"

* * *

**Jesse and Lex.  
Two years ago.**

Jesse Wright lay naked on a cold steel table in Luthor's lab. A cold sterile affair—aren't all labs—this one occupied the other part of the top floor of Luthor's tower. The only other tenants were Luthor's own ridiculously spacious office, Teschmacher's desk, and a private washroom in deep green marble.

And right now the only two tenants in the lab were Luthor and Jesse. Luthor, hunched over an exam table to one side. Jesse, flat and nude on a cold steel table. Very cold. He found himself rubbing his hands against his thighs to generate some warmth. Any warmth.

Luthor, looking through a microscope and holding a syringe between the viewpiece and the tray: "Well? Any last minute jitters?"

"Don't you have a medical staff for this?"

"No."

"Layoffs?"

"None of them know the solution as I do."

"So your doctors are less smart than you. Somehow I knew it."

Luthor turned around, holding the syringe up, depressing the plunger to squeeze excess from the needle's tip. "Something like that."

The sight of Luthor, in a lab coat, syringe locked in his hand, a reflecting mirror strapped around his forehead—Jesse then found himself shivering too. Whose body was this, whose life, and why did he feel it wasn't his? "Am I allowed to ask what that is?"

"This is going to take your limp away."

Jesse paused. "A booster?"

"The genetic component of this treatment would baffle you," Luthor said. "Now lie still."

"Okay. There a reason I'm naked?"

"I just told you to lie down; you were the one who took it as a celebration."

Jesse smiled. There was that.

"Now," Luthor said. "The procedure functions as a lumbar puncture, although we don't require quite so stringent surgical guidelines as St Mark's or Metropolitan General. I need to you to turnover on your side. It will be a deep injection, Jesse. You will feel every inch of it."

Jesse nodded.

"You're ready to begin?" Luthor said.

Jesse paused. Then: "I'd like my life back now, Lex. Seven years of hobbling and this fucking cane and not being able to turn at the waist. Seven years of this fucking crippling pain in my side, not being able to fucking slouch or sit or sleep or have sex the way I want to. No. You put the fucking thing in there, Lex, I don't care how much it hurts."

Lex dabbed a cotton ball of iodine around the small of Jesse's back. Then he laid one hand on Jesse's waist, right at the iliac crest.

"Take a deep breath," Luthor said. "Because this is really going to hurt."

Jesse did.

Then the pain was sharp and cold and minute. Jesse winced.

Luthor was steady. "Do you still blame me?"

Jesse thought about it. "No."

"Why."

"I decided to be angry at someone who—Allen couldn't understand my anger." Then he paused. Quieter: "He never would. And maybe he'd spend a lifetime wondering why, or maybe not. Maybe he wouldn't care enough. You know. To care. About me.

"And so your rage would be justified."

"Yeah," Jesse said. "And I would never have to forgive him. For what he did to me."

"Which is?"

"Allen…brought me to you, Lex. I became involved in his life and in his…whatever the hell it was with you. Whatever you were trying to do to him. I became a target. And I was pretty pissed off about that, for a long time."

"Where you happier before you came into his life? And by extension mine?"

"It was smaller. More…provincial?" Then Jesse was quiet for a long moment. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, I was happier."

"Were you in love with him?"

Jesse sighed, a long wheeze that became a groan. "Yes."

"But you didn't tell him. And yet you chose to share part of your life with him. An aspect of yourself you hadn't honestly engaged previously."

"We were friends," Jesse said. "I trusted him. And I knew he needed a friend at the time. Someone to be there for him."

"One more minute," Luthor said and held the syringe in Jesse's spine. "You owed him honesty? Was there some albatross ideology that he would feel the same way?"

Jesse made a face. "For a minute. Sure. I thought I almost had him."

"But?"

"But he made it clear he was pursuing other ends. Wrapped up in that awful girl, and his obsessive research into your past."

Low, quiet, passively and dryly, Luthor said, "Look where that got him."

"Yeah. Do—do you still talk to him?"

"I know where he is. But it's his choice—whether or not he wants back into this world. He glimpsed it so briefly, so long ago when life and responsibility were new. The same goes for you."

"How do you figure?"

"We live in a fantastic, cruel, stupid, wondrous world, Jesse. Anyone who doesn't see it is blind, willingly or not. Once upon a time, Allen and you chose to embrace it, this world in which people like me and Superman live. When the other shoe dropped and the reality set in, Allen found himself and his presumptions wanting—his entire worldview turned upside down. So he tunnelled within, searching for meaning. He ran and hid, and has since come to believe his exile empowers him to cynicism and fear. Mostly of me. I, however, refuse that premise; I refuse any conceptual reality where I am a destroyer of lives. I am a promoter! I have only ever had humanity's interest on my heart. Appealing to people like you and Allen in ways you understood, ways that spoke to your experiences, and could empower you to take the reins on your lives. I tried to teach you how to save yourselves.

"So some alien wouldn't do it for you.

"No," Luthor said. "I'm not a man to be feared. Only respected. That's all I've ever asked. I believe you accept that premise, Jesse, which is why you've been working for me these past years, and why you're sitting here accepting my treatment to better your life."

"Well," Jesse said and hesitated. "I owe you something."

"Stop owing people," Luthor said. "Goodwill deficits are no way to live. You owe me nothing."

Luthor took his hand off Jesse's hip.

"Five minutes," Luthor said. "We need to be sure."

A pause. Awkward. Unsettling. All the synonyms.

Luthor was quiet. His eyes narrowed and a sinister, sceptical frown came across his face. "Tell me what matters to you now, Jesse."

"I want to live," he said and sighed. "I suppose you know that."

"I'd be a poor mentor if I didn't."

"I want forty more years. Is that—is that a crime?"

Luthor said, "No. But it comes off as greed. To people who believe in sufficiency."

Quietly, exhausted for some reason. Jesse said, "I suppose I should have asked this before, but what does this do? Exactly?"

"The nanotech solution contains an intelligent multi-part enzyme, but even that doesn't accurately describe its composition. The first component is a high-dosage, immediate-response painkiller meant to mitigate certain neurological effects of the procedure. All temporary, of course, and preprogrammed to avoid what its developer called systemic promulgation of the payload. The second was a destabiliser; Doctor Guevara placed steel bands around L-1 and T-12. Draconian as it is, or was, it was a solution but by no means permanent. That was what limited your movement and decreased your quality of life. The destabiliser will repurpose, for lack of a better word, those steel plates into ossified structures. Element restructuring at the atomic level. I'd gladly explain more but the science gets truly byzantine from there. What's important to note now is that within the next three weeks, as your skeletal structure resumes, your mobility and quality of life will improve. Vastly."

"You—you gave me my bones back."

"Yes," Luthor said. "And when our work is fully completed, you'll have even more to your name."

* * *

**Seven years ago.**

The first obnoxious dawn of light brought pain to Jesse Wright's world. He knew he was in a hospital—doesn't everyone. The sheets were drier, starched free of life or comfort. His skin oily and slick and gross and trapping. His eyes hurt—more aptly, the light hurt. He must have been asleep for too long. Or so long. Who knew.

He sighed and brought a hand up to rub his eyes. IV tubes ran in and out of it at the wrist. Old-school medical science. He made a face and relaxed, put his hands back at his sides, slowly, purposefully. He took a deep breath but got halfway there before needles struck him in the chest. Sharp, poisonous pain. He grimaced, loudly said "Ow!" and a choice sampling of profanities before looking himself over.

Hospital sheets covering him up the stomach, hospital gown covering his body.

He sighed. Hands weak, he pushed the covers down below his knees and hiked the hospital gown up. Round white sensors on his knees and thighs, hooked into the beeping thing at his bedside. His penis lying lifeless. A fading tan and a body robbed of exercise it had so lately enjoyed. The same sensors stuck on his chest in three places. Irregular, he thought. He lay back, thumping his head, almost, into the pillow. Drew one hand idly up his chest. The sensors, muscles sure to be atrophying, arrector pili micro-muscles beneath his skin giving him gooseflesh. Around his navel, and tracing a slim strand of hair from there up to his sternum—

A—a dimple. No, an indentation. A divot. A fucking golf divot, a chunk taken out of the green.

He sat up and looked at it. Sure efuckingnough. His breath quickened. He looked around, eyes wild and panicky and pissed, leant to one side—his side burned and he powered through it.

_There—the drawer—_

The mirror.

"The mirror!"

A trembling hand brought the handheld to his face. He looked at himself.

Smiled a weak smile.

Still alive.

Then he angled the mirror down his chest. A barren nothingness, muscles, flesh and bone, thin bands of hair—who did he think he was?

_It hurts—_

_Oh yes it hurts you idiot you think it wouldn't—_

"Oh."

Not even a whisper.

A sigh. He rested the mirror on the curvature of one leg, just above his groin, and stared at the reflection.

Just above the navel, northeast if you were facing him straight on and made directions that way. The divot. White scar tissue spidering out from it.

_Everything hurts—_

He let the mirror slide down between his legs. He lay back.

Ran his hands up his face, through his hair.

He remembered.

And he cried.

Later.

He was barely awake to receive his first visitor.

Luthor.

He sighed. Maybe it was a chuckle or a sad mirthless wheeze. Maybe. In another life.

Luthor in all black except for a white oxford under his impossibly expensive three-piece, and a regiment tie in purple and green. His hands clasped in front of him. Son of a preacher man.

"I'm sorry, Jesse."

_You're—_

_ You're sorry._

_ You shoot me. To prove a point to some idiot in red underwear. You shoot—_

_ And you're sorry._

_ That's right._

_ Another sigh. I get it. Rich. And him being—_

_ Well. You know._

"In case you didn't know, you were shot. I have taken the liberty of funding your reconstructive surgery. Doctor Guevara isn't my kind of surgeon, but he expects you'll walk again. Though not without some level of discomfort."

_Yeah._

Yeah, you think and don't say. You don't say anything.

You look at him. All his clothes and his money, his—his face. The face of this town, the sludge in his heart the sludge that runs through this town. All of it. Everywhere.

The first thing, you think and remind yourself—the first thing you should know about Lex Luthor is that he's everywhere. He's all things, and no things. Person and unperson. You learned this the hard way, Jesse, by being friends with a fucking moron that let you die. You allowed this piece of shit to shoot you in some war with some other fucking moron that let you die. This is what good people do, you think, and you stew. Good people leave you, they flee. Bad ones stay—they are always hungry, they always want more from you.

You sigh and you think—

_Maybe—_

_ Maybe you're dead, and Luthor is leading you through Beyond._

_ Oh but it's nice to feel needed_

You haven't—had to feel needed. Ever.

_Nothing makes sense anymore._

"Tomorrow," said the savior in the black wool coat, "you'll be released. A limousine of mine will take you to the airport. From there you're chartered to Rochester, Minnesota. I know a doctor or three at the Mayo Clinic who will expedite your recovery."

Choke out a word. Just one. What's left of your life, in this fucking room, in those jeans folded in the chair over there, in this stupid, flawed brain.

Just one. "Why?"

You open your eyes and look at him.

He looked serious. Or sad. But a fake sad—it's always fake. Always. You didn't know him for that long but it's always fake. It has to be.

"Because I need you, Jesse. I need someone who understands. The ways things work. The way they can change. And the way to deal with it."

You even raise an eyebrow.

And when he says he'll pay you for this dirty work of his—when he tells you what it is you'll be doing when you're free of pain and physical therapy, and cause and effect—

You listen.

_Because now he's all you've got._

* * *

**Six years ago.**

**Gotham City.**

Seven months of physical therapy. Exercise balls, push-ups, low intensity cardio and parallel rails, inching yourself along them. Learning how to walk again. How to stand up straight. How to spit and piss and shit and bend down to pick up your keys and in the case of one very confused and eager orderly, how to fuck again.

Reconstructive surgery, the staff says, has limited your spinal range. Whatever that is. You went to school for Business. To be one of those MBA fucks in their suits, peaks lapels and pinstripes and patent leathers, cigars and false importance and a piece of paper that says you know what it is to be Gordon Gekko.

And that's done for.

Inching across the parallel rails, pulling yourself. You're getting better. Not a hundred percent—who is, and will you ever get there?—but getting up there. Getting up there.

Not a hundred percent.

You're not Superman for fuck's sake.

And then you come back to reality. Which is better. Marginally. At least you're not dream-crippled here. Just a cane and these nifty-ass Pumas.

"Jesse? Still with us?"

"Yeah." Come back. Focus. Blink fast and get your shit straight.

You used less bad words—

Swore less—

Cussed less—

Said 'fuck' less—

When you were happier.

Look forward.

The psychologist is a humoured guy. Dour in an esoteric way only you and he get, doctor-patient whatnot, he's easygoing and he's never judged you for what you've told him. Part of the recovery process, says Luthor. Workout your physical dimensions and mental ones as well. He even recommended an excellent practitioner. Had you transferred from Rochester to Gotham. Do a little Back East geo-therapy.

Tall fellow, messed black hair, enjoys tweed suits and Buddy Holly glasses. Dutiful note-taker, married to his fountain pens and his legal pads. Slouches in his chair a bit. Be jealous of that, Jesse. Be very jealous.

"Yes, I'm here, doctor."

"Good. Now, I believe we were talking about your parents."

"Yeah. Yeah."

"Go on."

"Uh, well, you know, I was born in Star City. Grew up there. Good town, little, you know, weird, but, ah, well not altogether bad."

"Sure."

"Only child. You know what that's like?"

"A little," the doctor said.

Wave a hand. "Yeah. Quite an experience to be the jewel of your parents' eye. Quite a thing to be at the centre of a universe. Theirs. I mean—two people, who, you know, created you. So there's—I think they loved me very much."

The doctor made a face. Kept writing. "Did you comprehend their love, Jesse? Such as it was?"

_I try not to, Doctor.  
_

"I think so. I mean, yeah, why not. There were no, no external stimuli. No other child, not a brother or something in my way."

"No one to take them from you. And—vice versa."

"Sure."

"Tell me what happened to them."

Pause. For a moment that's longer than you think, Jesse.

"They died. Summer between High School and college. And I—sat there like a little bitch through a funeral for two, listening to these fake friends and morons that pretended to know them and I accepted their condolences. Pity. What a—it was a bad, ah, a bad thing. Experience, doctor. Whatever you want to call it. I, uh, spent the rest of the summer in a haze. I don't even remember. I was already accepted to the university in Metropolis, all I had to do was graduate and not die between May and August."

"And," the doctor said, "Without your parents, cliché as it is, you unravelled? Indulged every whim of the flesh readily available?"

"Ayuh that's a big ten-four."

_Who are you? Who is this pitiful boy doing this easy talking?_

"Do you feel you've come to terms with it?"

"No." Not even close. Not for a second.

"Why? In our previous sessions you've connotated the freedom you felt at University, to pursue interests strictly your own. Being unencumbered by superior expectations. The joy of not having to stand on ceremony for some authority or peer. The freedom to do whatever you want, to love whoever you want. Free from the relentless tyranny and fear of small-town America. Free to indulge the same whims you indulged in the summer. What changed? Why express connection, real or imagined, to a system and to people who you've indicated previously were only limiting to you? Whatever positive value judgments we choose to impose on them."

"I met a boy."

"Romantic?"

You scoff. "Hardly. A hall-mate. Lived next door to me. Brilliant guy. Maladjusted, awkward, looked good naked. An ideal attraction, right?"

The doctor, against his credit, laughed.

"Well," he said and wrote something short on the legal pad. "None of us can help who we are. We've talked identity before. But, ah, what made this one different from your previous entanglements. Not as confused as the rest? Not as willing?"

"I didn't pursue him. I mean I told him the truth. We became friends and I felt I owed him that much."

"But?"

"But I didn't see him as a quick lay, you know, not a, uh, conquest. He was as smart as me. Nearly as in tune with how I viewed the world, how we saw ourselves. We, ah, spoke the same language."

"A brand of solipsism," the doctor said. "Seems outside your purview. Do you feel you allowed him into your narrative, or maybe he fought his way in? Did you offer your knowledge and your story to him willingly? As, so it is said, friends do?"

Another pause. "Yes. Yes, that's—that would be accurate."

"And so this boy represents something your parents never did for you. A gift. Open source knowledge. Offered freely and taken gladly in an equal sphere. University in those days being what it was."

"Open source," you say and think about it. "I like that."

"Patent pending," the doctor says and cracks a smile and keeps writing. "A gift in your life, this boy you knew. And like most gifts, eventually—displaced?"

You wait and you think. And when you accept the truth, what a nice feeling it is, isn't it? When you accept the truth. You look up at the doctor, the thin man in the tweed suit and you say, "Yes, Doctor Crane."  
You never loved him. Or you did and he left you to die.

And so did your soul.

And Crane, there—looking at you like he knows all this and doesn't judge you. How could he? He's doing things for you that no one else could or would. He's saving you.

Lex, you think, slowly and evenly.

He is saving you, too.

* * *

**Six years ago.  
Luthor and George Taylor.**

They were old sounding boards, Luthor and Taylor.

Luthor had bought the _Star_ years previous in a fit of rage over a particularly vicious _Daily Planet_ editorial: a barn-burning slandering of Luthor, LexCorp, capitalism, democracy, sunshine and the price of gas and every fact in existence, tearing him up one side and down another. A gem from one of their star reporters—she was no longer among the living and so unworthy of Luthor's hatred these days. But the ideology remained. Luthor the mad dog. Luthor the butcher. Luthor as Reinhard Heydrich, he even read, during one of Olsen's "Week in the Life" segments.

To himself Luthor revelled in their hatred and their correctness. Because the thing was, the _Planet_ had him figured from day one.

He bought the _Star_ to spin reality in the opposite direction. Luthor the beneficent, Luthor the great and powerful, Luthor the saviour of a city on the brink.

It was the _Daily Star_ that broke the first story about Superman's final fight with Brainiac on Fifth Avenue.

The _Star _who got the exclusive obituary on one Lois Lane.

The _Star_ who exploded the Jimmy Olsen murder across the front page.

Poor kid.

And even before Lex Luthor painted his name across the masthead, the _Daily Star_ used to be a great metropolitan newspaper. As breaking and timely as the _Planet_, with whom it liked to have direct competition. Perry White and George Taylor used to golf together, go to the Al Smith dinner in Washington together, place single-dollar bets on who'd get the scoop first, White's Lane and/or Kent, or Taylor's Kirk and/or Golding. But like so many things in Metropolis these days, the glory was gone. Had been gone for a long time. Because ever since Superman fled, people seemed anxious for present existence. No past. Future as myth. Just millions of people living in the moment.

To some extent Lex Luthor's other media operations were responsible for this. To a complementary extent, your average Metropolitan filled in the rest. Ennui became a state of mind. People tunnelled within. They withdrew. They became self-interested. Once again. And Luthor moved his media engines against this in disapproval.

Preaching tolerance, peace and love for Metropolitan to Metropolitan. Shame and a term Luthor eventually trademarked—"lostalgia"—for the age of superheroes.

And it wasn't true.

Luthor didn't care about Metropolis.

Or the media he controlled or bought into silence.

Or the lives he was lining up just so he could use them.

George Taylor told him as much. "I think you needed him, Lex. You need someone to keep you busy."

Luthor smiled an easy smile. "Now what makes you say that?"

Taylor waved a fat hand. "Because all this—this town, the way Berkowitz came back, the economy you control, or LexCorp controls—this is what happens when your guards leave. Heh. You spend your adult life fighting Superman to a standstill every Wednesday. I heard he even asked you once about your cancer cure."

Luthor shushed him up. "He's a sadistic trickster, George. A selfish god who wouldn't have dared join the rest of us down here on the ground. No. You wait, George. I'll show you. The alien—the cruellest joke of all. Watch him deliver us from our own baser impulses, and then see where your nanny-state theology gets you, George. Create enough safety and soon everyone stops wearing seatbelts. And then what?"

Taylor looked mildly interested. "I…don't know?"

Luthor scowled. "And then the bottom drops out. You were there. You know this is true. How much longer was this city, this country, going to rest on its laurels? Easy in its false consciousness and capricious hope from the Man of Steel? No. No. I am not a destroyer of hope, George, despite whatever the _Planet_ thinks it knows. I am a creator!

"Those people out there could have relied on Superman to save them from house fires, terrorist plots, foreclosures and the goddamn Salvation Army but you know something, George? He'll outlive them. He'll outlive me. And so whatever he does will not matter—because for him it'll be the blink of an eye. As quickly done and as easily forgettable. He'll live forever and the rest of us will suffer and die. Does that sound like a moral paragon, George? The kind of self-important man-god you want watching you?"

Taylor was quiet when he said, "Lex, none of us can live forever. You've been in business since you could pee standing up. You know that."

Luthor sighed, slow and seething. "The day after Superman left, I started getting my ducks in a row. A lifetime of losing to him has taught me to prepare for the other shoe to drop. This time I'm getting out ahead of it."

Taylor exhaled and sat back in his chair. Fat hands entwined among themselves and rested on his get, a striped poplin doing its level-best to contain the gut beneath. "I imagine you didn't come here to yell at me about things I already know?"

"Correct," Luthor said. "How much would your corporate payroll need to support a full-time columnist?"

Taylor cocked an eye. "Opinion? Sports?"

"Arts and Leisure," Luthor said and scowled.

Taylor looked at the ceiling, doing the math. "Golding's our highest rate. Seven hundred kay a year for syndication—weekly, five hundred papers from here to Seattle. For this paper alone? Hundred ninety. Fair offer."

Luthor's eyes narrowed.

Taylor made a face. "This paper has sailed the boat with LexCorp since time began. I don't mind telling you, I'm not about to change that. Who do you have in mind?"

"O'Neill, Allen," Luthor said.

"O'Neill," Taylor said, searching in his mind for it. "Sounds familiar. Yeah, yeah, kid used to follow you around for a brief period in the old days?"

"That's the one. I need to keep him where I can see him. Having him roaming is more dangerous for my long-term operations."

"Alright," Taylor said. "I'll, ah, need to see a writing sample."

"He runs a weblog out of Hob's Bay. Some bleeding heart affair. Send him an offer, hire him point blank, I don't care. Get him in here and get him started on the old stuff."

"Sad laments for the world that used to be?"

Luthor stood and went for the door. "Illustrations of its flaws. And a glimmer of hope for the world that's coming."

* * *

_**Continued...**_


	5. The God of Wealth

**Excerpt:  
**Blank, Buddy, et al., _A Chronicle of the Fourth World and the New Gods of Super Town. _ (Oa: CE 853, 900), pp1972-73:

"...There came a time when the Old Gods died. The brave died with the cunning. The noble perished, locked in battle with the unleashed evil. It was the last day for them. An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust. The final moment came with the fatal release of the indescribable power—which tore the home of the Old Gods asunder—split it in great halves—and filled the universe with the blinding death-flash of its destruction. In the end there were two giant molten bodies, spinning slow and barren—clean of all that had gone before—adrift in the fading sounds of cosmic thunder…silence closed upon what had happened—a long, deep silence—wrapped in massive darkness…it was this way for an age. Then—there was new light…"

* * *

**Seven years ago.**

**_The Daily Planet_, "Luthor Lied," by Lois Lane:**

"Local autocrat Lex Luthor—Alexander to his schoolteacher and old chums, one of whom includes the publisher of this very newspaper—was acquitted last year in Superior Court of a host of charges. Where to start? Forgery, fraud, assault, extortion, Battery, body snatching, conspiracy to defraud, criminal threatening, cruelty to animals, witness intimidation, witness tampering, trespassing, perjury, racketeering in conjunction with the 1992 Dent Act in the Gotham District Court, manslaughter, accessory to kidnapping—finally, arson.

This reporter will not go into legal eagle details on each of these counts. Frankly I leave it for you, readers. The decision made by our very own Metropolis Superior Court and the lovely Judge Weisinger is now a matter of public record and the Luthor case now fully researchable at the downtown library through the magic of microfilm. So instead what I will say about it is this: Lex Luthor lied.

For twenty years he had built an image of himself as a respectable, philanthropic pillar of this city—in his own words 'of this community', which just drove the point home how small he viewed all of us and how primal his own view of his importance became to him over the years. Again, the events I am writing about now have all happened, true, and are all matters of record. See for yourself, Metropolis. Remember the Lex Luthor that held a gala party aboard his luxury yacht? Remember terrorists invading that yacht and holding us all at gunpoint? Remember Superman stopping them, and Luthor congratulating him? Luthor telling Superman that he'd hired the goons to give us a good scare and to bring Superman over to his side? And then remember how Superman had Luthor arrested for that little crime? Public endangerment, was it?

Remember the Lex Luthor that was filmed kicking and screaming, reportedly of the 'it's not fair!' variety, at the statue of Superman in Centennial Park, days after Superman's funeral? What of that Luthor?

What of the Luthor that bombed this city to pieces in what our distinguished competition called 'The Fall of Metropolis', locked in a war with the oh-so-vague Cadmus Laboratories over…what? What was it exactly? Was anyone certain then? Are we certain now?

Oh Lois, I know you're saying, Oh Lois, but what of Luthor's help with the city during the Final Night and the Panic in the Sky a few years ago? Surely those can be humanitarian efforts. Surely he was coming together with Earth's superheroes to defeat a common and terrible enemy? Surely even the very article you're reading right now is not an attempt to bare the truth of him to the world before it's too late?

Wrong. I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Lex Luthor did not do those things because he cared about humanity. The furthest thing from it in fact is true. Lex Luthor, our richest, most powerful citizen—the man millions of Metropolitans rely on for paychecks, health insurance, college scholarships for their children, countless scientific and political advancements that make this city a true world of tomorrow—that Lex Luthor, you mean? He doesn't exist.

Like the Batman myth, or Superman having a secret identity, Luthor the Great and Good is a façade, a false image he's conjured for himself over years of power accrual and manipulation. Lex Luthor does not care about anything except Lex Luthor.

I hate to break it to you.

And so everything he does—has done, will do—has been a calculated effort to bring this city evermore under his thumb. And to kill Superman, of course.

That is what was at stake in his war with Cadmus. What was nicely glossed over in his trial. What the people of this city seem to be tacitly overlooking.

We live in a fantastic world, friends. A men of super men and wondrous women, and we trust them with our lives. And we trusted Luthor too. We trusted him to be a responsible guardian of our hopes and dreams, to protect us here on the ground when Superman could protect us in the sky. And who knows, for a while maybe Luthor even bought that line.

But that was a long time ago.

The Luthor we all know, the one we live with and read about and even see in the streets, he's not the Luthor you think he is.

I am asking you to wake up and look hard, Metropolis. Look at the man who would trade you all in for an easy dollar that he does not even need. Look at the man who would throw you all under the nearest bus for a shot to kill Superman. Look at the man who would feed your organs to hungry wolves if he knew there was even a chance it would enrage Superman.

What then can we say of Lex Luthor?

Perhaps only this: what do we ever really know of the people around us? The people to whom we admittedly owe our existence? Maybe we never really know who anyone is. Maybe there's just narrative. The stories we construct and live in. So life doesn't hurt.

Look at him hard, Metropolis.

Look at the man who almost destroyed your city last year. Look at the man who mocked our justice system last week and will continue to mock in as time goes on. A man who plays god with human lives, trading them easily and openly in a decade-long war on Superman.

This is who Lex Luthor is.

* * *

**Six years ago.**

**Jesse.**

He had been working for Luthor for some time now; he didn't bother to remember just when or how it started. He remembered why, of course. He had a white scar and a divot in his abdomen to remind him why. Every day, why. Thinking of the divot—the wound—became part of his muscle memory. He found himself walking, or limping more accurately, down the street and pressing finger or two into his side. Checking to see if it was still there.

Or maybe, if it had gone away. Mysteriously. Charitably.

In the lobby men's room of the _Daily Planet_, into which he'd ducked to sneak an obsessive, depressive look at the scar…he slunk and stared. Made a face. Shot out a pissed off little breath. Tucked his shirt back in. And walked out.

Made for the elevator. Art Deco.

It wasn't always Art Deco of course, but the Planet had been a victim of Metropolis' supervillain rage issues so consistently that every new rebuild was a nice excuse to remodel too.

So there was that.

He stared at the ceiling in the elevator, at the disc lamp in fake marble. The whole way up. Some fat idiot, all dress pants and flab and roly-poly white shirt and paisley tie and Larry King suspenders, next to him sniffling into a hanky too old and weak to bear the fatty's boogers.

He took a deep breath.

The doors pinged and slid open at the newsroom. Fiftieth floor or something, he didn't bother to really remember the directory. Fatty McGoo slithered out and away towards a conference room. The rest of the elevator dispersed.

Jesse made a confused face and ambled out of the elevator. Wandered out lithely for a few long minutes.

It was a strong hand on his shoulder and a throaty, smoky voice that stopped him.

"You lost, buddy?"

The hand belonged to a tree trunk arm, covered in hair, going up and cutting into a stocky body in a pink polo a size too tight. A burly man and a burly laughable moustache and a slick haircut smooth on his head, terminating at the base of his head in an almost-mullet.

"Uh yeah, I guess," Jesse said. "I don't think this is Customer Service."

"Newsroom, buddy," the oaf said. "I'm Steve Lombard. Sports guy. You read?"

"On my tablet," Jesse lied. "Generation X or whatever. Had a couple questions about my subscription and thought I'd come down, see if anyone could help."

"That so?"

"Yeah," Jesse said. Slowly, carefully, he looked over Lombard's shoulder, espying his target. Lombard kept talking like a moron and Jesse humoured him.

Looking. Looking. Looking.

There—

Leaning over a desk, looking at some stack of Xeroxes from Fatty McGoo.

Young and slim and beautiful.

Jimmy Olsen. Skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors and a green sweater over a white dress shirt, a madder bowtie stuck neatly at his neck, orange hair messed and gelled to stay stuck, a shiteating little smile across his face the whole time.

Jesse swallowed. Jimmy fucking Olsen.

Talking to Lois fucking Lane, standing there in a beige pantsuit, a sex barrier, he thought. Repellent even to the straightest of men or beasts.

Lombard smiled an oaf's smile and slapped Jesse on the back. Guiding him out of the newsroom slyly. No tourists allowed after all. "Anyway, bud. Any reader's a good reader. Elevator'll take you down to the circulation department on twelve."

Jesse gave Lombard a fake smile. "Thanks Mister Lombard. I'll tweet you or something, kay?"

Lombard waved a hand at him. Fuggedaboutit.

In the elevator again.

Then the lobby.

Then the street.

He dialled Luthor.

"Yes?"

"He's there alright," Jesse said.

"Good," Luthor said. "Texting you his direct line."

"Okay, I'll report later."

"Fine," Luthor said. "Use my office."

"Got it."

And he did. And disconnected. A moment later his phone pinged. Olsen's direct line, from Luthor, as promised.

Jesse dialled it immediately.

"Hello?"

"Hi is this, ah, James Olsen?"

"It sure is, what can I do for you?"

Jesse smiled. A real one. Jimmy fucking Olsen. "Ah, yeah, my name is Jesse Wright, I work for Lex Luthor. I've read your stuff, those little investigations you've been doing into his old days."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Listen, I think I can help you."

Silence.

"Mr Olsen?"

"Uh yeah, yeah, I'm here. Just, uh, I'm sorry, Jesse, go on."

"I used to work for him, Mr Olsen. More precisely, I used to work with him."

"Look," Olsen said. "If this is another secretary sex scandal, I'm gonna have to pass. Those don't go anywhere. And frankly I'm tired of the secretaries' excruciating detail, so thanks but—"

"Jimmy," Jesse said. "Even Lois Lane didn't know the shit I do. I'm offering the exclusive to you. Now do you want it or not, because if not—I know Killian and the _Ledger _will. So you tell me."

"Fine," Olsen said. "I suppose you want to meet? Shall I Google the nearest parking garage?"

"No," Jesse said. "Come to LexCorp."

An hour later, Olsen did. Jesse was surprised. He even told Teschmacher as much. Good old Teschmacher, dutiful Eve, sitting out at the desk in front of Luthor's office. His own human screener. Nobody got past Teschmacher. Partially this was because she'd been working for Luthor for years in one capacity or another. For the past ten or so it had been as private secretary and visitor-screener. Her desk in the foyer outside his office was permanently clear. Never a sheet of paper on it. Not a pencil or a coffee cup. Just her personal computer, plastic and with a see-through casing showing its guts, and three television screens inlaid in the desk. One showed the downstairs concierge. Another, the main security office. Another was a birds-eye view of Luthor's office, from a camera Jesse suspected as mounted somewhere above and behind Luthor's desk. So no. Nobody got past Teschmacher. And she always knew everyone who was scheduled to meet with him in any and every day, what time they were coming, if they had even entered the building, when they left and even if they were taking a piss somewhere on company property. It was that kind of control.

"You know," Teschmacher said. "You probably shouldn't be surprised."

"And why is that, Eve?"

She smiled easily and wiped a wisp of hair from her face. Old school hair, too. Permanently in the seventies. "Because a very wise man once told that that people can be very predictable in their wants and needs."

Jesse grinned, slowly. "And who would that be?"

She merely said, "Lex," and went back to typing.

Jesse stood away from the monitor bank inset in her desk, and walked into the Luthor's office. Walked off to the right, into the private washroom. Shut the door and lifted his shirt.

Stared at the divot in his abdomen.

And thought.

He didn't remember ever actually coming out to anyone. In High School, back west, it was just sort of there and he never really acted on it. Allen, in college. But that was ancient history. And, he supposed, he did that because of a very fractured love triangle in which the two of them happened to be involved. Allen and Jesse and some hooterific idiot Allen was bending over every Thursday. Actually, Jesse wasn't sure about that; the way those two acted it was like they'd never had sex or even seen each other without a shirt off or something. Two mindless puritans. Jesus Christ. And he just had to fall for the swarthy, moody idiot who couldn't return his love.

Figures.

Jesse came back to reality. Looked at his chest and its sad fading tanline. The divot and its white spider-scars.

Touched a finger to it lightly. Then he frowned, and looked at his frown in the mirror. A sad one. Eyes narrow and sunken, his entire face seemed to sink along with them. He slouched. Or kind of stood reclined. Ran a finger up and down and across the divot, the scar, the gunshot wound. All of those things it happened to be. He breathed. And ran his hand down beneath his waistline—

The intercom pinged. "He's in the elevator," Teschmacher said.

"Cool," Jesse said. Pulled his hand out of his pants and walked out of the bathroom. Tossed his cane on the corner of Luthor's desk, the old Resolute model in those days, and sat, and waited.

The office was dark by the time Olsen got up there—the elevator doors sliding open beyond the double glass entrance to Luthor's own wide expanse. The city was backlight against a mid-autumn night. One of those dark at five-thirty days.

And here came Olsen. Young and slim and beautiful, tucking a trenchcoat over one arm and waving to Teschmacher who simply said 'go on in'.

And he did. Motion sensors in the floor and ceiling tripped on residuals: lamp discs on Luthor's desk and runners in the ceiling, glowed to life. Bathed Olsen and Jesse in twilight.

Olsen threw his coat over one chair and shook Jesse's hand.

"The famous Jesse Wright," Olsen said. "I thought I recognized your name when you called. Took me all afternoon to find even a smidge on you."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah," Olsen said. "All I could find said that you were at University as recent as, oh last year, I think it was? Then left because of an injury?"

"More than a year ago," Jesse said. "And yeah, ah, I was shot."

"Holy shit," Olsen said in a higher tone, surprised and effete. "Really?"

"Oh yeah," Jesse said. "Pretty much point blank. You care to see it?"

Olsen considered it. Pouted his lip out and raised an eyebrow, then said, "Sure."

Jesse leaned away from the desk, straightened his posture, and lifted his shirt a bit, enough for Olsen to see the spidery white scar tissue. "A thirty-eight, I think it was. You know, someone shoots you in the chest, you tend to not remember stuff like that."

"Wow," Olsen said. He reached out a spindly finger and ran it over the scar tissue. Jesse inhaled. "Lucky you survived." Olsen's voice was quiet, airy. His eyes locked upon the wound and on Jesse's chest, his fingers warm to the touch.

"I had good doctors," Jesse said.

"Must have." Then Olsen was seated. "So, ah, are we alone? I mean I recognize our trappings and I have to admit, I'm not really comfortable here, so I have to ask if we're alone."

"We are," Jesse said. "Those glass doors are polymerised to be soundproof. Revolutionary stuff actually. And anyway, Eve out there is bound by certain nondisclosure agreements to keep her mouth shut. So you're safe."

"And you," Olsen said. "Luthor just giving the keys to anyone?"

"Believe me, I know how this looks, but Eve won't talk. And Luthor won't find out."

Olsen chuckled a bit. "Going behind the old man's back. I think I like you."

"I have to say, Mr Olsen, I've been following your stuff for years. Your photo work, the stuff on Luthor, the stuff on Intergang. Brilliant stuff. You've got a real nose for it. Friend of mine in college did journalism for undergrad: nothing to boast of, but it was good challenging work. They made you a reporter what, last year or so?"

"Yeah," Olsen said. "After the, ah, unpleasantness."

"Right, the uh…Lois Lane, was it?"

Olsen was quiet in the next moment. His eyes narrowed and his jaw muscles tightened and he just said, "Yeah."

"Well," Jesse said. "Let's get started."

"I'm ready when you are," Olsen said and smiled.

Jesse popped himself back on the desk's edge again and started talking. Everything Luthor himself had told him years before, while in Santa Prisca. All true of course. But Olsen didn't know that.

And since Jesse had already decided Olsen wasn't going to see tomorrow ever again, this was the best way to make things work.

So he started talking. And to make it look like he was troubled, conflicted, talking to the floor, he put lots of ums and uhs and pauses into an otherwise memorised speech. And to give it a little extra interest, he took the time to stare at Olsen's crotch.

"So," Jesse said. "The first thing you should know, Jimmy, can I call you Jimmy?" Olsen nodded. "Great. First thing you should know is that it's all true."

Olsen was writing shorthand on a small legal pad in his lap, sticking a pencil eraser into one tooth, rolling the tape recorder idly around in one hand. Now he stopped. Looked at Jesse and said, "What?"

"It's all true," Jesse said. "Few years ago one of your guys, name of Clark Kent, wrote a whole series on Luthor, right?"

"Sure."

"And then Lane took over, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well, they got it all right," Jesse said. "Trust me. Down to the last detail. The terrorists on the Sea Queen. The clone conspiracy. The murders. Even her fake-ass little personality assessment in 'Luthor Lied'."

Olsen looked confused. Brilliant young lips pursed and his face tightened. "Uh."

Then Jesse figured it out. "Oh. So. Even Lane and Kent couldn't tell you. Kept the secrets to themselves. Published them, but who trusts the papers these days? Am I right? They published those stories…and your editor allowed it…and when she finally went too far, Lex sued your employer into the poorhouse. It's okay, Jimmy, I know I'm right. I was around last year when the lawyers shut it all down. I was there. I read all about it. In the _Star_. If that means anything."

Olsen took a deep breath. Therapeutic, long, his chest puffed out and in melodiously. "Yes," he said after a moment. "Yes that's true. Some of us…had doubts. After a while, we even kind of thought she was…revenging herself on Luthor. For some reason."

"She knew what he was," Jesse said and stood. Clipped the cane to his side. Olsen stood too, on instinct.

Jesse stalked toward him.

Olsen put the legal pad to one side and started back away.

"She knew," Jesse said. "All the terrible things he's done to kill Superman. Did you know there's a line-item in his annual personal budget for anti-Superman ordnance? Something like eleven billion spent in the last year alone. Did you know there's a little proviso in the Board of Directors by-laws that says any LexCorp employee caught aiding Superman in any way is to be summarily fired? Did you know he had a founding hand in the creation of Cadmus Laboratories? And that once they stopped being useful to him, he had them all murdered? That he snuck his own DNA into the creation of Superboy? Did you know the Boy of Steel—which is a really great name for a porno if I ever heard one—did you know he's half-Superman and half-Luthor?

"Did you know Luthor bought his election? Did you know he found out secret identity after secret identity while he was in the White House? That he's killed more people in a week than you or I have met in our lives? There is nothing he doesn't know or can't know. Nothing that isn't immediately available to him. Nothing he can't do. He can buy and sell people. He make you burn just for looking at him cockeyed. He can ruin your life, or make you a god, and he won't even blink while he's doing it. He owns this town, and he has for decades, and he'll continue to own it until time stops. Superman couldn't stop him. Lane couldn't stop him. What fucking chance did you think you had?"

"I…I…"

"You came here under the pretense of learning something about Lex Luthor you didn't already know. Something that arrogant cow Lois Lane hadn't already spoon-fed you."

The glass double-doors stopped Olsen's retreat. He gasped and his breathing quickened. He put up his hands, weak, trembling. He was scared.

Jesse leant in. Olsen smelled of Burberry cologne and yesterday's coffee. Jesse got up to Olsen's ear, licked it, and whispered.

"Lex Luthor…created the world we're all living in. He reunited his old friends, the Legion of Doom from when both our parents, Jimmy, were young, and when that happened all those awful people finally got serious about killing their heroes. Changing the world. Doing away with establishment politics. The lies and stopgap solutions of Superman and all his friends. And look at us now. Aren't we better off? Aren't we happier? Free to pursue our own lives, buddy! Free to do what we want. No more moral authority. No more super-guardians. Just us, here on the ground."

"It's," Olsen said, trembling. "It's evil. He's. You can't—please."

Jesse dropped his cane. Grabbed Olsen's face tight. Both hands clutching, grasping, feeling the skin, the warmth beneath it.

Olsen's eyes were wide. His mouth hung open.

Jesse kissed him. Greedy, deep, messy. Moved his hands down to Olsen's waist and pulled him closer, closer, till he couldn't get any closer. Still he kept the kiss, the embrace. Stolen time and space and presence with Superman's old pal. He moved his hands up, fumbled with Olsen's belt, pulling his Oxford untucked and unbuttoning it. Madly, quickly, intently.

_Propositioning him on the fly, but oh that's so wordy_, Jesse thought—_no don't think just go and do before you really have to do something—ah_

At last he'd unbuttoned Olsen's shirt. Ran his hand up an unremarkable chest. A sad and skimpy musculature, pale ginger skin, cold to the touch; Olsen's freakout going physiological and coursing through his system, plunging it into shutdown.

Jesse pulled away. Stuck one hand in his back pocket.

Olsen stared.

Jesse's face turned to stone. A frown and his eyes going deep, staring through Olsen and his foppish exterior. He wrangled one hand into Olsen's pants, just under the waistline, and pulled the pants down to Olsen's knees. He kept the hand on Olsen's bare crotch.

Then he brought the other hand around. Olsen, shell-shocked, still staring, Jesse staring right back.

Jesse brought his free hand up to Olsen's abdomen.

And stabbed him.

Olsen screamed like a little girl.

Fell to his knees.

Jesse grabbed Olsen by his gel-stuck hair and pulled his head up. Looked him square in the eye, Olsen's baby blues teary and red in shock, Jesse smiling right back at him. Jesse kicked him and Olsen fell on his back. Clutched his guts lamely. Stared wildly, moaning, broken and blind, at the ceiling.

Outside, Teschmacher looked up from her typing.

The elevator doors pinged open.

Olsen writhed on the floor.

Jesse crouched by Olsen. Picked up his cane as he did.

And said, "You wanted to know about Lex Luthor. I am sorry, Jimmy. I really did like you. Had a crush on you for years, you know."

Olsen started weeping.

And convulsing.

Jesse looked up.

Luthor walking toward him.

"I'm sorry," Jesse said. "Lois Lane spent years fighting some imaginary war of words against him. Obviously it didn't work. Tell her that when you see her, will you?"

Olsen was still weeping and writhing and moaning when he saw Luthor stop over him and stand by Jesse's side. Still weeping when he saw Luthor smile. And say, "I win." Still weeping when he saw Jesse tear his notes into confetti.

He turned over. Turned away from Luthor and Jesse.

And then there was nothing.

* * *

**Across time.**

**Brainiac.**

On the second day, the World Computer processed cruelty.

On the third day, the World Computer processed humour. It harvested Rann and with it, the technological wonder which Rannians called Zeta-Beam. It fought Adam Strange for .026 seconds then crushed him mercifully. This was its humour.

On the fifth day Brainiac harvested Zamaron. And it did not process the Love quotient.

On the twenty-third day it harvested the world Okaara, home to the greed lords and the orange light of avarice.

On the millionth day, it broke the barrier between universes, travelled to the anti-matter universe and consumed Qward. It added the Weaponers and their distinctiveness to its databanks. It found the one called Sinestro among them, who fought Brainiac and lost, and it added his yellow ring to its databanks as well.

And on the ten million millionth day, the world computer travelled through time to the Very Centre—and harvested Oa. It consumed the central power battery of the Green Lantern Corps, murdered the Guardians of the Universe, and sterilised their planet.

It was then that Brainiac neared godhood.

And returned to Earth, to wait for the end.

* * *

**Five years ago.**

**Sarah.**

She was part of his life. Once.

Now she was better off.

Sarah Andrews had gone to High School with Allen O'Neill, now, the stories say, a famous at-large editor or reporter for one of the in-town rags. And they were rags, that much was true. All of them and their little lives and little stories, vying for the next exclusive, or eager to pour out vapid, fake hearts to you for slight opinions and false facts.

A long time ago, when she and Allen were in school and in love—a long time ago indeed—she bought into the lie. That reality is absolute, not merely what you make it to be. Laws change, people are a dime a dozen, but facts are facts, and the facts of this sad town nowadays was that people were insular little monsters is what they were.

She couldn't be surprised. Allen had typified this new world so excellently and he had done it so long before any of them that—

She stopped.

She hadn't spoken to him in years. After college, and the unpleasantness, they drifted apart. Oh she tried to keep up contact, in a distant way, let's talk but not really talk and here's my number if you ever want to chat but if not that's cool too.

She hadn't spoken to him. What, five years? She couldn't even recall. Long time.

Long time to forget what someone is like. How they've changed. If at all.

She left it at that.

Allen was always fighting his own battles. She'd told her new therapist as much. And, new therapist, because it turned out the old one turned up face down in the river a few months back. This new one was supposed to be quite something, or so she'd heard. Recommended by one of her gals at the agency.

"Gals," the doctor asked.

"Yeah," she said. "The United Way, down Twenty-Second Street. Good bunch of people there."

"You enjoy your work then? You find social work rewarding?"

"I do," Sarah said. And chuckled. 'You know. Spend my formative years taking care of basket case after basket case and where did it get me? Professional taker-carer-of."

The doctor laughed. "That's a good one. I'm pleased to see you laughing, Sarah."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, the notes I've inherited here from Doctor Nybakken are very cryptic. I'd like to address first this Allen character from your formative years, as you call them."

"Oh," she said. "High school boyfriend. Nothing to report."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," she said. "A troubled boy then. A troubled boy now. Only with grey hair peeking through, or so I hear."

The doctor smiled a bit. "You don't care for age? That process?"

"I don't regret maturity," Sarah said. "But getting old? Losing people? That smarts."

"Of course. The fear of loss…can be a powerful motivator. Is that why you broke up with Allen? Tangentially, why you've found yourself in therapy these past few months? What's not clicking in your life, Sarah?"

"I don't know," she said. "I guess we didn't really break up. After we graduated high school, we kind of drifted apart that summer. When he started University in the fall, we came back together a little, I guess. But then other stuff happened. And that was that."

"Other stuff?"

"Another adventure of his with Lex Luthor and some new friend I'm sure Allen was cheating on me with."

"Girl?"

"Boy."

"Ah."

"Allen," she said and sighed. "Was always smart. And always wanted to show you, tacitly or beat you over the fucking head with a book obviously. Couldn't blame him, though, he was reading Webster's in the third grade. There were two whole years of school where he skipped recess to plod through Catcher in the Rye."

"Not exactly light reading for, I'm guessing, what, sixth grade?"

"Yeah," she said. "He was beyond all of us. And he kind of knew it. It made a relationship difficult."

"But he chose you. We've talked about that previously."

"Yeah." Then she was silent.

"What changed?"

"He did. He—he fell in with Luthor. Got wrapped up in these ridiculous schemes and thought he was important. Thought Luthor could give him the world."

"But," the doctor said. "You wanted to be enough."

She was quiet. Staring at the floor.

"Yes," she said. "Now it doesn't matter I suppose. He's out of my life."

"Our decisions render our reality," the doctor said. "He is—as long as you choose him to be."

Then she looked at her new psychologist with a stern face and in a stern voice she said, "Then he's out."

"And you're moving on."

"I have to. Staying put wouldn't be fair to my husband."

The doctor stopped writing. Pocketed his pen and removed his glasses. Ran a skeletal hand through messed black hair.

"What, Doctor Crane?"

"The new husband," Crane said. "Tell me again about him?"

"Danny Kendall. IT guy out here for the public school system. Keeps us close to where the kids need to be."

Crane smiled. Sinister. "You…didn't mention kids before."

"It never came up," she said. "I was. I was trying to—move past Allen. You know. You. You spend your young life pining after someone who can't return your love…and then one day you wake up exhausted. And I did. I think that was it. That was the last straw."

"And now you're better?"

"Getting there," she said. "I hope."

"So do I," Crane said. "Our time is up. I'll see you next week."

She smiled politely and gathered her bag, a dowdy paisley affair, from its leaning place against her chair. And she shuffled out without a sound. A mouse. A silent girl who just wanted to be left alone.

Crane put his glasses back on. He wondered, although not for long, what this O'Neill could have done to make her such a withdrawn mess. But then he corrected himself. He knew quite well. Luthor's files and briefings weren't in doubt.

And Crane was a student of human behaviour.

He knew people.

He stood and went to the window. And spoke aloud, to someone he knew couldn't hear him. If he was alive.

"You hear me, Batman? I know how they think. One thing you can't take from me—"

His mobile rang. A courteous chirp or three. He plucked it from his pocket.

"Yes?"

"It's Luthor. Are your sessions proceeding as planned?"

"Oh yes," Crane said. "You know I have to say, I'm actually quite glad you've included me in this. I haven't practised formally in years. It's nice to get back in the game. Nice to see that not everything's changed."

"Oh?"

"The road ahead," Crane said and smiled. "A cause of fear for many, yes?"

"Try ruling the world sometime," Luthor said. "How much time do you need?"

"With her? I anticipate her patience will run out far before my own, Lex. I foresee she'll flee. Yes. Once I peel her mind back like an orange and show her its true nature, she'll flee. And then I'll find her."

"There can be no mistakes, Crane. I want these loose ends wrapped up before he returns. Do it soon. Or I'll find someone who will."

Crane said yes and disconnected. Slid his mobile back into his pocket. Looked out the window again. A small, depressingly small and geometric park cutting through the rest of MU's campus. All stone and brick and glass and false humility. Statues to academic gods. Creatures of limited scope.

_And you, Jonathan? What of the Scarecrow?_

He smiled. Oddly.

He would think of something.

So the human story went on. Unabated. Uninterrupted for once by superhumans and their higher concerns.

The story went on. Had always gone on. Would always go on. There will, he discovered, always be another story. Another life to save. Another mission. Another disaster to avert. Another crisis to solve.

It ends when you wish it to end.

What matters then is command. And discipline.

And courage.

Courage for his home, that faraway planet bereft of home or meaning for him now.

He had left after the last battle in order to find himself. To save himself. Because he had not been able to save them.

Now he had time to ponder both. And neither.

All and none.

Far out in terminal space-time, he had space enough to grow. Time enough for love.

And there amid dying stars and the Wall which separates what is from what was, End from Source—

He, an alien, Kal-el, the last son of Krypton, discovered the Sentient City, and its only inhabitant.

The human once named Henshaw.

* * *

_**Continued...**_


	6. Whatever Happened to the Daily Planet?

**GCN's 'Evening Report with Mike Engel':  
**"…Finally for you tonight, we've got an update on the _Daily Planet_ lawsuit. Today, LexCorp's fleet of lawyers finalised paperwork with Metropolis Superior Court, District Attorney Byrne, and Mayor Berkowitz to dismantle weekly publication of the newsjournal. According to sources within LexCorp and Metropolis City Hall, the _Planet_'s current weekly print schedule, as well as digital and dot-com versions will bump to a bimonthly schedule, and its Board of Directors has asked for the resignation of Lois Lane. Lane, as you may recall, won a Pulitzer a decade ago for her multi-part exclusive about the debut of Superman. No doubt this restructuring will affect the _Planet_'s eight hundred-some employees, everyone from Editor-in-chief Perry White down to staff newsboys delivering papers to the suburbs. A statement is expected later today from Franklin Stern, owner of the _Planet_, on the paper's long-term financial plans and indeed its future. Up next, a final check-in with the weather, and of course, stay tuned for 'Late Night with David Endochrine'…"

* * *

**Seven years ago.**

**Luthor.**

Time stopped when he read the editorial.

He breathed. In and out. And crumpled the newsprint in one hand. Stared ahead at the glass doors leading out to Teschmacher and the gilded elevator beyond.

He stood. Finished what was left of the whisky in his tumbler. And walked out.

He walked to the _Daily Planet_. However far it was up Fifth Avenue—he forgot exactly. He walked, could you imagine. He called all his important lawyers on his mobile and told them to prick up their fucking ears and to read today's paper and to meet him at the _Planet_ or it was their hefty stipend, their decades of kickbacks, out the door, followed swiftly by their own asses. So they listened, and dropped what they were doing. And met him in the _Planet_ building's lobby.

You have time to think when you walk. One of the few pleasures it gives. Time to think. Time to grow. Time enough for hate.

He'd been embroiled, if that was the word, in a stupid little press war with Lane and White and the whole editorial staff for years. A decade at least by this point.

No more.

For those years it had been slander here, libel there. Smokescreens. Shellgames. Secrets and lies and Lois Lane's imagined slights. Insinuations and vendettas, little penny dreadful Perry White had paid her to write, so she could shellac LexCorp with all she had. All her journalistic strength, her peerless deductive and reasoning skills, her silver tongue and razor wit. All of that she brought to bear in her one-sided war with Luthor, with his policies, and with reality itself it seemed.

And White had allowed her to do it. Misguided pride, or his own axe to grind. But he couldn't do it himself. Editors-in-chief get paid to not write editorials. So White stayed away. Got involved when necessary, when he imagined she went too far.

No more.

He allowed this one. This, this different editorial. This venomous piece of shit White allowed to roll off his presses.

Luthor walked past Schoen's Flower Shoppe at the intersection of Fifth and Wabash. He wondered exactly when Lois grew a spine. Had it always been there, which in turn connoted Luthor's own blindness? No, that couldn't have been possible. Perhaps she was put up to it—but, this was less probable still. Hers was an iron will. She did what she wanted to do and you merely stood by. In a fractured way, before it had become a nuisance to him, Luthor admired it.

And her.

Perhaps then her nerves finally hardened. Perhaps her long-standing "relationship" with the Man of Steel was having a confidence effect. Maybe the alien was making her better. Sterner.

He scowled.

For no other reason than this, he wanted to break her.

The lobby of the _Planet_ building was empty. He strolled right past the front desk assistant, who stared at him.

The staff of the _Planet_, for the most part, had never seen Luthor. Never met him. Never knew him. The sight was always from afar. Always at some dinner. Always behind a lectern with Berkowitz or some other puppet hovering, waiting to be introduced. Always some barrier between staff and man. No more.

Here he was, standing alone and quiet, arms folded over a broad, muscular chest, the Armani suit barely containing him. Deep green eyes staring at the floor bank, above the door. A gilded arrow-hand gliding across a stained-glass spectrum, bronze numbers inlaid, one to thirty.

No one had ever really seen him. Not this close. Usually he was out of his Tower, into his car, and gone. Always some shield.

Which meant he was, in some respects, also not very real. Luthor the myth. Luthor the insane billionaire who never bothers his fellow man whom he loves so much.

Inwardly that image amused him. Endlessly. George Taylor's editorial work put to good use. The truth, though, was different. Of course Luthor professed a love for the average Metropolitan. His strong heritage, his proud workmanship and inner discipline. As if the town were some blue-collar breeding ground and he its harvester. A promoter of its people.

The thing was—

She was right. Of course she was right. Lois was always right. Always about him, too. And he loved her for it.

She alone understood Luthor.

In ways the Man of Steel never could.

The elevator doors pinged and slid open.

And since no one ever really saw Luthor just walking down the street these days, if they had ever—

And because when someone like Lex Luthor is in the same room with you, someone with that intensity, that stone dourness on his face—

The newsroom stopped what it was doing. And stared at him.

Lombard stopped in mid-Big Gulp.

Ron Troupe stopped in the middle of a sip on his latte.

Dirk Armstrong stopped mid-cruller.

And on the far side of the room, out of Luthor's line of sight, Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane stopped, frozen, by the copier.

Nobody said a word to him. The only sound was low volume televisions on pillars around the newsroom, pulling live feeds from GCN, WGBS, WLEX—all the good ones and far worse ones, televisual rags, scandal stations, as far out as Gateway and Coast City and Keystone.

To Luthor they became background noise. The newsroom was a set—of course, it was always a set to him. Peopled with morons and ingrates sleepwalking through their tiny lives and content to go along with White's editorial toolery.

Half-hearted solipsists, Luthor thought. The lot of you.

He stalked out of the elevator and headed straight for White's office at the end of the main stretch. Without slowing, without stopping or even looking down, he snatched up a copy of the day's Planet from some idiot's desk and clenched it in one hand.

Shoved the door open. Threw the paper down.

White looked up at him slowly. Quietly. He breathed out a plume of blue cigar smoke.

The door clasped shut.

"Fire her," Luthor said. "Now."

White waited a moment more. "Lex, you know I can't do that."

"No dismissal. No suspension with pay. No leave of absence. Fire her. Do it publicly. Make it ugly. Destroy her, as she's tried to destroy me. Print the termination on the front page."

"Lex."

"You will drag her through the mud, as she's dragged me through the mud."

White stood. "No," he said. "I don't think I will. She makes us too much money. And anyway, I thought you respected the free press."

"The same as to everything else," Luthor said. "My terms. My press. My city."

White made a disagreeable face. He turned around and flicked the blinds open with one finger. "Where's this coming from, Lex? Why the sudden interest in what my staff does?"

In the distance, the LexTower was blocking out the sun.

He felt Luthor's hand, warm and firm, on one shoulder.

And his voice. Sweet and sinister. "Fire her. Or I will take everything from you."

And then Luthor was gone. White waited a long moment. Stayed in his chair, hands still steepled over his spare tire, his big fat gut, his corpse reclining in this leather chair he'd won as a gift from the fine folks at Hyperion years before. He stared at the glass door to his office, deep cherry wood, stained even deeper, prairie-style bevelled slats cutting over the glass, squaring it off in opposite corners. And he looked at Luthor, leaving. Striding toward the elevator.

Luthor had to wait for the lift. He pressed the button and looked at the number display above the doors. He looked to one side. Double-take. He narrowed his eyes and cracked a smile.

Lane and Olsen hovering near the copier, doing their level best to look busy. To not look at him.

"Olsen," Luthor said. The elevator doors pinged and slid open.

Olsen looked at him absently, slack-jawed.

"Nice tie," Luthor said, and was gone.

Olsen smiled and ran his hand over the bowtie.

Lois slapped him on the arm with her stack of papers.

A voice from the other end of the room. White's office: "Lois. Olsen. Kent. My office."

The three of them looked each other up and down, and fell in line.

Olsen sat. Kent leant against the sideboard. Lois stood.

White leant on his own desk. Everyone was quiet.

"Lois," White said. "I want everything you have on Luthor. Empty your hard drive, print it all out. Everything from the Sea Queen to 'Luthor Lied'. Every note, every tape recorded conversation, every sticky note. Spread it out in the conference room. Olsen, same for you and your photos. If there's an article we framed and put in the lobby, take it down and get it up here. Kent-"

"Yes, Chief?"

White wiped his face with one hand. He was pale. Quieted. Different.

Kent looked over the rim of his glasses, surreptitious. Sure enough. Perry's blood pressure was up. Heart pounding out of his chest. Grinding his teeth, too.

"See, uh, see if you can get Berkowitz on the line," White said.

Kent nodded.

They all looked around, at each other. And at nothing. White frowned. The he stood away from the desk and waved them on. "Let's go."

And they did.

Lois stayed. She glanced out the door briefly and met Kent's wink. He'd be listening. Good.

She turned back to White.

"What did he say, Perry?"

"Lois—"

"Did he threaten you?"

"Lois—this really isn't the time."

She leant in. Put her hands on the desk. Got in White's face. "If not now, then when?"

White waited. Then he said, "This was it. The last straw for him, and for us. He's going to take us for everything."

Lois was silent, too, then. She stood, straightened herself, and sighed. And put on her brave face. You don't grow up with the irascible General Lane and not have a practised poker face. Such as it was. So she shut up, and put on the strong front.

And inside, she broke into a million pieces.

She could tell White meant it. Which meant Luthor meant it too.

"We have nothing to stand on. He'll send his lawyers down here as quick as he can," White said. "This afternoon or tomorrow. They'll have court orders and subpoenas and we'll have to hand it all to them anyway."

"And," she said. "We're prepared to do this? To roll over for him? What about legal? Can't they help us?"

White had been looking down at his desk, his week planner, his ashtray full of burned out Upmann stumps. He looked up at her now. And said, "This is my call. Alright? My direction got us here. It's Editorial's problem, Editorial can deal with it."

"But?"

"...Every time before he's just leaned on us, Lois. Chrissakes, time was he'd buy us out and prance around like the self-important asshole he is and not do anything and that'd be the end of it. Time was," and White got quieter now. He used to just play with people. Now—now I think he actually wants to destroy us."

"So," she said and choked a little. And fought it. And pushed it back down. "We fight him back."

"Not this time," White said. "You know what he said to me, Lois?"

"Yes."

"He walked in with that look in his eyes and told me to fire you for that article. I told him no. I stood up to him. And he said he's going to take everything from me. From this paper. From us. All our work, Lois. The lives we saved, the stories we broke. Exclusives and our anthologies and—and the damn obituary section for Chrissakes. He'll wipe it out."

Lois frowned. A sad frown, where her whole face just. Kind of. Sank. Shoulders drooped and face slacked, stroke-like.

She believed him.

"This is it, then."

White stood. "Maybe. Probably. But we can still face it head-on. Are you with me?"

She smiled. "Always."

A week after Luthor's visit, the lawyers came. And they came for everything.

Luthor's personal attorney, Joanna DaCosta, stormed in with an accordion file of court orders and a chip on her shoulder. Pencil thin and stiff as one, too, in a smart grey pantsuit, hair pulled tight on her head, artsy Buddy Holly glasses close to her eyes. Face stuck in a frown. Olsen saw her coming and slunk away in the opposite direction. Perry White was right about that much. While their paralegals and junior partners set up shop on the conference room on the far side of the newsroom, poring over longbox after longbox of the _Planet_'s editorial history with Luthor and LexCorp—the old ownership deeds from when he'd bought the paper years before from Stern, the original renter's licence from thirty years before when LexCorp was nothing but an office and a half on the very top floor of the Planet building, every article or lead Lane or Kent or photo Olsen had ever taken: all of it laid out, covering the long table.

White holed up in his own office. Kent and Olsen and Lois joined him again.

Olsen was standing at the door, staring across the room, gawking at DaCosta and her legal eagles.

"Beefy," he said.

Lois, annoyed: "Huh?"

"She's scary."

"Lawyers are scary people, Jimmy. One has to be scarier than the average bear in order to survive."

He looked at Lois. Shrugged. Looked back at the lawyer gaggle.

White said, "Alright, kids. Quiet down. Conference call with Luthor and Berkowitz."

He pressed 'speaker' on his phone. Then the number. Then he lit a cigar while it dialled in. While the participants presented themselves.

"Berkowitz here," said a tinny voice Kent heard in stereo; here and from across town. He turned around in his chair, cracked his back to cover himself, and squinted. Through White's office wall, through the Planet building's exterior. Five blocks north and west. City Hall. Berkowitz sitting fat and sad behind his desk, Luthor leaning on it, hovering over the telephone almost.

Kent frowned.

"Uh, yeah, Frank, this is White. Kent and Olsen and Lane are with me."

"Good," DaCosta chimed in. "I want Editorial representation."

"Ah, we're not a union shop, Ms DaCosta," Lane said. "So any fears—"

"Not my concern," DaCosta said. "I only care because one of the paralegals is running a manila envelope over to your office right now, Perry, please look at it. And make sure your staff gets a good look too in case they have objections."

The paralegal slid into the office, almost on cue. Handed the manila envelope, thick and heavy, to White without a word and slid out again. Back to his cohort.

"What's this?" White said.

"Just open it," Luthor said.

White did.

Kent knew. He cased it quickly.

A settlement offer.

White glanced over the initial terms. If he'd been drinking coffee, it would have been spit all over the front page. As it was, he choked on his own cigar smoke.

"Print reduction? Layoffs? Are you joking me? Luthor, you—"

"I'd advise you to take it," Luthor said. Calm and distant.

White glanced—glared—at Lois. "Frank? What does the Mayor's Office say? Officially."

Berkowitz spoke evenly. Rehearsed: "Perry, I'm afraid I support LexCorp in this matter. The District Attorney...is of similar sensibilities."

Kent had focused his attention on White so much that the anguish—the pain, the effort, to hear him speak, to eke out a quiet and airy and desperate plea—it hurt to hear that. "Frank, please."

"Look, Perry, I'm very sorry. But you know free speech just doesn't keep you safe at night. Not the way it used to. Your staff—letting them run around unchecked and ransacking Luthor's reputation, Perry, it's—the man is an institution, okay? You can't just walk around town printing whatever you like and slandering whomever you like because you don't care for the way he runs his business. Or because it sells papers. We have to think of the big picture here."

"Then why does his give a damn how I run my business, Frank?"

Silence from Berkowitz. Exasperation maybe. Kent leant forward. Focused. And listened.

"Perry," Berkowitz said. "It's LexCorp. Forget it, okay? Just—just let him have this. There are things we can do to help you. Part of the settlement is transferal of your staff to the _Ledger_ or the _Star_. To keep them working, you know."

"And the _Planet_ gets thrown onto the ash-heap?"

Kent stretched ostensibly again. Squinted toward City Hall. Berkowitz was looking at Luthor for direction.

"I'm afraid so," Berkowitz said. "Perry, listen, I'm truly sorry—"

"Got it, Frank, thanks." White said it in a huff and disconnected the line.

More silence. Long and excruciating.

"Well," Kent said. "What do we do now?"

"We fight it," Olsen said.

Lois said, "No."

Olsen's eyes went wide. "No? But what about—"

"This is beyond any of us," Lois said.

Then White spoke. "Jimmy."

"Yes sir?"

"Lois."

"Chief?"

"Lois, I hope you made back-ups of all your Luthor stuff. Hard copies?"

"In a file cabinet in my bedroom," she said. "Why?"

"Give them," White said. "To Jimmy. Olsen, you realise what I'm asking you to do?"

Olsen's eyes narrowed. "I—think so?"

Kent looked at him. Stood and clapped his shoulder. "The onus will be on you, Jimmy. Carry on what Lois and I and Perry have been doing all this time. The time isn't right. But it will be."

"He's right," Lois said. "Any one of us goes at Luthor, it'll be a bloodbath. He'll see it coming and crucify us. Or worse."

"So," Olsen said. "You're…passing this onto me?"

"We're trusting you," White said. "Because, ah, after this is all said and done, I don't think any of us is going to be around much longer."

"But," Olsen said. A whimper, a fading protest. "You can't mean—"

"I think I do," White said. He stood and put a hand out. Palm down. "Luthor means to take everything from us. Keeping Lois' work alive—keeping the truth out there—is our last best hope for saving this city."

Lois put her hand on White's.

Kent was next. His hand, warm and soft, on top of Lois'. They looked at each other. And smiled.

"I love you," she said. Quiet and hopeful and trembling.

He said, "I love you too."

Olsen put his hand in.

They agreed on it.

Three of them—Olsen, Kent and Lois—left White's office. Olsen darted off to one side, to his desk and his cameras. Kent and Lois walked straight. Toward the elevator.

"Is it," Lois said. "Too late to ask Superman to help?"

He looked at her. "I could stop this, you know. It could all go away."

They stopped. She smiled. Thought about it for a moment. The chance to have Superman settle Luthor's hash for good, to save the great metropolitan newspaper from obsolescence and corporate vengeance. To see the look on Luthor's face when Superman flies up to him and says something catchy and intimidating. 'The _Planet_ is not to be tocuhed'. Yeah. Something like that.

But—

No.

She came back to reality.

"It…was always going to end," she said. "Best I suppose to have it end here. Like this."

"How do you mean, Lois?"

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. "Here," she said. "With you."

They joined hands. They had given into Luthor. But then, a lot of people had given into Luthor. That didn't make it any easier for Lois Lane, watching that man send her life's work up in flames. But-did it matter? She couldn't tell. She knew one thing though. Where there was Clark, there was hope. And tomorrow.

Hand in hand, they walked toward the elevator.

Toward the future.

Toward the end of the _Planet_.

But not the end of hope.

In the next three weeks, DaCosta and LexCorp rushed the settlement through Metropolis Superior Court. By the fourth week from Luthor's first visit, it was official. _The Daily Planet_ ceased to exist in any practical form.

It was then that Brainiac arrived.

* * *

**Five years ago.**

**Allen.**

The apartment was a gift of George Taylor. Really of Luthor. I couldn't forget that. It was Luthor's name on the masthead. Owner and CEO, _The Daily Star_ Incorporated, Your City Feature Since 1856.

I was given the job. I didn't earn it. I have to say, to a large extent it's given me a chip on my shoulder that I'm unlikely to ever drop, at least in my mind. Mere months after graduating—early, no less, from MU—I got a telephone call from Taylor. Come work for me, he says, downtown, all the perks, write whatever you like. Contract for five years at a time, premium pay for every printed article, ten percent differential for every syndication.

It stunk of Lex.

Of course.

It was always Luthor. Would always be.

I guess I had modest goals. Then and now still. A Jeep for a dream car, for instance. The _Star_ contract made me comfortably wealthy. It allowed me to put up in a nice little Georgian appointment on the Northeast Side. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, lavish space.

I keep the drugs in one bedroom.

The day after graduating, a few months before Mom and Dad died, I went down to Hobart and Belmont and paid some hard guys, big guys, scary guys with tattoos from here to ya-ya, a shit-ton of money for a shit-ton of stuff. They told me what was all in it; I've since forgotten, even though it's become a standard order. They know me. And I guess I know them. At least, I know them as the white guy in the hoodie and the black guy in a tattered leather vest who doesn't bother to hide his face.

The apartment. Or the bedroom, more precisely. Oh I furnished it all right, and so it became a guest room in name only, but there were more narcotics and uppers, downers, sidewinders tucked into little places than I cared to keep track of. Marijuana and cigars I keep under the bed. The cocaine in Ziplocs and envelopes, as bookmarks in Dostoevsky, in Hayek, in Salinger. Books I hate and own, would never read and so could afford to use as stowaways. The booze—beer, refrigerator. Whisky in the cabinets, underneath the living room bookcase. Rum, top of the fridge. Apple pie moonshine, behind the Drano under the sink.

I write from home. A very cool home office set-up came in a few months ago from Schonenfeld's. I stay in, I drink, I write. And I don't go out. I can't stand it.

A recluse at twenty-one.

I guess I imagine myself a new kind of Hemingway. I almost wrote that 'someone once called me…', but then no one's alive or in my life these days to make that supposition.

Drunk and depressed. Let down at the society I just so happen to be a part of. Write about. Had been given a job by. All the prepositional endings.

And. I don't remember when I became so-when I started hating it all. So disaffected.

It had, I thought, and still do, less to do with Luthor shooting Jesse those years ago. And more with Luthor the man. His meddling in lives. Allen's and Jesse's and even Sarah's a little.

_Oh fuck. Sarah._

That dumb bitch.

No. That's not quite accurate. Scribe, edit thyself.

She wasn't. All. Bad. No. Just—oh, just, what misguided. Sure.

We were very much in love, you see. Once upon a time. Or, at least, a version of love, fractured and warped and strange and very different. From anything resembling human existence. The way other people, you know, real people have relationships.

I was in deep with Lex in those days. And she—she didn't get it. Or she did and didn't approve. At the time I didn't care. I was, stupidly, trying to build a life. I relive those memories with some regularity. And it pisses me off.

Who was that smarmy little bastard clinging to Luthor? Becoming, alas hindsight, what I found out to be a pawn in some war against Superman.

What adult does that?

Who would fight God and risk losing all? For a chance at victory?

I didn't get it. And so I left. Or fled. Fled is more accurate probably. Disappeared.

No sooner did that happen than mom and dad died. But I've written about that before, too. So, you know. No double-backsies.

Rhetorical question. To no one at all: what must it be like, to want to escape. And be stuck. To take Luthor's paychecks and deride him in the same breath—to be Schroedinger's Concept?

Oh. I'm living it.

You think about stuff like this, when it gets dark out and you're still not used to the lights in your giant apartment being out. Miser or not, cheap or not, there's much to be said for light. It keeps us free. Open. It keeps the bad thoughts out.

You have those thoughts. At night. When there's nothing left to do. In those last minutes before sleep, before you drift off to someplace else. You think, and you worry. What will happen? What's coming?

I'm in the bath. It's therapy. One of those high marble affairs, so deep and made of the good stuff, marble that holds the heat of the water and soaks you up in it. Sound, sense, sight. All gone. Sensory deprivation, then. Losing what gives you your insight into the world. So you can focus on you. How simple, right?

I let out a breath. Slow and let down. Stand and get out and towel myself out. Sling the towel around my waist. And then I'm in the kitchen heating up some loose leaf Ceylon.

And the doorbell rings.

I stop. Creep toward it. Look through the peephole.

Oh fuck.

Open.

"Allen," she says. And smiles. And looks at the towel around my waist. "Did I come at a bad time?"

"Sarah."

You dumb bitch.

* * *

**Two years ago.**

**Jesse and Alex.**

Memory is a tricky thing. He didn't remember when he acquired Alex. Slim little blonde number, gay as the sunrise, easy to please, easily pleased. A nice package deal for Jesse Wright. Every time they had sex he tried to figure it out: either Alex had been a patient at Doctor Crane's and they had met there, or else he'd been some dancer at one of a million clubs Jesse used to go to when he was first starting out, back fresh in Metropolis and new to the work Luthor was giving him. So new he had to bury himself in tequila to deal with what he was doing.

The good news was, those days were over.

He could bury himself in Alex now.

They were sprawled naked, entwined, on a king-sized bed in a no-tell motel outside town. One of those strip mall affairs with easy, obnoxious neon arrows pointing to it from the street. Stuck out by Fort Bridwell, this one. Its sole purpose then: late night vittles of the body for the off-duty airmen, the ones on leave, or on their way and so out to get a last lay with their sweetie before pulling narcolepsy duty at some base in Germany or what was left of Bialya or wherever else there happened to be 'Peace Affairs' going on.

He had to laugh. How ironic it all was.

Superman leaves the fucking planet, and wars somehow stop. Terrorists stop shoe-bombing western decadence, cowed into obsolescence by LexCorp's newest and most uninhibited military wares simply being pointed in their direcion. Nanny-state ideology at work: cameras, UAVs, drones from here to Singapore and back, cataloguing, analysing, matching, scanning. Quantifying and collating the whole planet.

No stone unturned.

He probably had no privacy here either. Probably Lex had slipped some tracer into his jeans or urethra or something and knew he was out here on the fringes, sweaty and tangled up with a young and eager boy who cared a little bit more for Jesse than Jesse did for him. Maybe.

One way streets are fine things, he thought. And it was nice to be on the other side of this one. For once.

Alex was asleep on Jesse's chest, an arm thrown across Jesse's chest, a leg across Jesse's groin, one of Jesse's arms pinned underneath him and massaging Alex's spine absent-mindedly. Jesse eased him over on his back, kissed his forehead, and stood. Made for the bathroom.

The geniuses that designed the motel had put the mirror above the toilet, which seemed impractical, but had a cool side effect. Jesse stood, cocked his head, lazily, still half-asleep, and watched himself pee.

Then he noticed something. He leant in, squinted. Turned in place halfway, staring at his own ass almost.

His mouth opened slowly when he saw the new spider-veins. The ones coming from the injection site, where Lex had cured his limp, fixed his bones and his problems yesterday.

It looked—

He frowned. Silver-black veins, striations, branching from the injection sight. Wrapping around to his front side. An allergic reaction?

He touched the web lightly—

Nothing. Felt normal.

"Hmm."

He flushed, closed the lid, and went back to bed. Alex was stirring.

Jesse smiled.

He was going to have to do something about that.

* * *

**Now.**

**David.**

And while this all was going on, far out in the sea, leagues below and beyond LexCorp's old seaside research labs, the old oil rigs repurposed for maritime and biological research-

In the ruined kingdom of Atlantis, in the golden hall at the city's centre, where stood now the empire of ashes, the Black Manta's final victory was at hand.

He had spent years hunting the last relatives of Arthur Curry, Aquaman. Across time and the seven seas. Years of Manta's life gone in pursuit of his bloodlust. And now it was all coming to fruition. The conquest was over.

Almost.

Orm, the Ocean Master, the exiled brother of the now-dead King, knelt in chains at Manta's feet. Subdued, beaten, broken. Stripped of his trident and his sorcery. It was the trident that interested Black Manta; it was the reason he hunted Orm these long years. It carried certain mystical and hydrokinetic properties. If you could call it that. The power to command the ocean itself.

How could the Black Manta refuse?

"Stand," he said.

And weakly, Orm did. Under his shellmask, he scowled and uttered an obscenity in Atlantean.

Manta gripped the trident in both hands. Tightened his grip to its fullest. To feel its heft, to measure its power. To hold it in his hands. Oh yes. This was a culmination.

"An enemy of the new Atlantis," he called Orm. "A traitor and usurper. For these crimes against nature, Orm, I sentence you to death. A long terrible blackness at the end of creation." Quieter, sadder, Manta said. "I pity you."

He levelled the trident at Orm.

Orm sneered. "King of Fools. Give this message to your masters. You do not know what it is to hold power. And that will be your undoing."

"Unlikely," Manta said. And fired.

The trident sizzled with gold-white energy. Burned a hole through Orm's chest as it atomised him.

The seas around him stirred. And under the cold steel helmet and burning red eyepieces, the Black Manta scowled. And opened a channel to Luthor.

* * *

_**Continued...**_


	7. The World to Come

**The WGBS Evening News with Cat Grant:**

** "…**Tonight's top story, the triumphant return of Frank Berkowitz. Political forces in the grassroots and among the city's Board of Aldermen welcomed back the former mayor with open arms. Mayor Berkowitz was thrilled, he said, to be back serving the city he loves so much. Berkowitz, some of you may remember, was Metropolis' mayor for two terms in the early and mid-nineties, only to fall prey to a nameless assassin, whose body was later recovered in the East River. An official press release from City Hall late this afternoon trumpeted the mayor's success in his long recuperation, and his own heartfelt thanks for the huge celebration in Centennial Park last night, where over five thousand Metropolitans gathered to welcome the prodigal politician home. We here at the WGBS Evening News also welcome His Honour back, and wish him much success. Virgil Brinkman, Berkowitz's predecessor and once the deputy mayor under Frank Poole in the late Nineties issued a statement of his own, thanking his supporters for their tireless years of help and kind words, and wished the restored Mayor Berkowitz health and good fortune. Up next, we talk to Commissioner Bill Henderson of the Metropolis Police Department on the change at City Hall and what effect, if any, it will have on the Department's most valued asset: the Special Crimes Unit. More next, after this…"

* * *

**Five years ago.  
Allen and Sarah.**

It went like this.

She came in. "Sarah," I said. In my head I called her a dumb bitch. Which she isn't, not really.

"Hello, Allen. How, ah, how are you?"

And of course I'm standing there in a fucking towel with yesterday's grime soaked into me because I just had to have a bath—had to have meditative time. "I'm, uh, I'm good. Come on—come on in, yeah." There I go issuing stupid formalities and extending my hand, welcoming this stupid bitch into my apartment, my home, my studio, where I work and live and write and inject heroin when no one's around and—

"Beautiful place," she said and looked around. "A newspaperman's salary these days. Does nice things for you I imagine."

"Not so imaginative," I said. "I have a good contract is all."

"I'm jealous," she said and smiled. And glanced at my body and the towel. It was never much, this flawed protein husk, but for some reason she loved it. For some reason I'll never get, she always loved me. I never felt bad about not being able to return her love.

Character failing, I suppose.

"How did you find me?"

"Phone book," she said. "I looked up the _Star_. Called the City Desk. They gave me to, uh, Reception. Reception gave me your number."

"They just handed it to you?"

She got close and kept staring at my body. Put her hands on my waist.

"Sarah—"

"I told them I was your wife."

Then she kissed me. One hand she wrapped around the back of my head, massaging my scalp and my hair, still wet from my bath of western decadence. She kept the other hand on my waist, and finagled the towel free.

Then, the good stuff.

I called it that because, you know, it is good stuff. You have sex once to get it off your list, and then you try to revisit it as often as you can. Years ago, when I was slightly shorter, more eager to please, and stupider, she had been the first one to tick the item off my list. On my bedroom floor, in fact, which I'm sure was more painful than I remember.

Bunch of stupid kids we were.

Oh the good old days.

We were laying in bed afterwards, sweating, exhausted, wrapped up in my sheets and each other. She was running one hand through my hair, gross and stuck to my forehead. And she said, "You know something?"

"What?" It was a whisper, and even then barely. She pulled in closer, buried her head in the curve of my neck and shoulder.

"I knew—you're not like normal people. You know that? For years. I knew you were different. Better."

"Do I look like a normal person?"

"No," she said and kissed my neck. "And I love you for it."

I smiled. It was a real smile, at least. I was amused, so what? "You dig the emotional baggage?"

"I do." She started tracing random circles on my chest with her free hand. After a moment she started going lower. "Do you love me, Allen?"

I waited. Looked at her. Breathed. One arm was pinned underneath her; I brought it up around, and cradled her. Kissed her.

And said, "No."

"No?"

"Why did you come here?"

Her face drooped when I said that. Almost like a stroke victim. Almost.

"I wanted to see you. I was in love with you."

I suppose I was pretty genuine with her. Honest. It saddened me to think it. Especially to say it. I was getting old. I know, merely twenty-six, right? But I felt old. Still do. That alone was a cause for concern. And a governing decision for most of what I've done in my life.

I was getting old. I couldn't stop thinking it. And being saddened by it.

"Those days are over, Sarah. We're not a bunch of horny kids anymore."

"Maybe I could change your mind."

"Sorry," I said and sat up. She followed, and straddled me. Unencumbered her breasts stared at me. To my great credit, I stared right back.

"Isn't there any part of you that wants back together?"

She moved her hands down my chest. I watched her do it. Even narrating all this now, it seems so detached. Who is this jackass, about to plough his old girlfriend? And what does he think he's doing?

Then we were kissing. Messy, greedy, sloppy. All of that. Hands everywhere and emotions all over the place and then she's on her back and I'm on top of her. Inside her. And she stops. And says, "What happened to you, Allen?"

"What?"

"What did he do to you? What…what made you like this? Were you…killing people? For him I mean?"

"What? No. Ha. No."

"Were you in the mafia?"

I chuckled. "There is no mafia in this town anymore. He bought out the last surviving Gazzo years ago."

She got out from under me. Sat up. "Then what is it? Or what was it? You used to laugh. I know it. There used to be a person in there."

I made a face. "I don't know what you mean, Sarah."

"Christ," she said and laid back. I ran one hand through her hair. Another up and down her side, breast to hip.

"Tell me."

She breathed. Sighed. Hard to tell which. "I was part of your life, Allen. Once upon a time. I tried to separate. I tried to be better. Better than you. Better than what you were when we parted…ways. Before. I mean. You weren't well."

"Not well?"

"What was it with Luthor? Was it the money? Was he paying you?"

"No," I said. Which was true. I was not on Lex's salary in the old days. If there was any word for what I was, it was Hanger-On. "He was—mentoring me. Showing me a life I didn't have otherwise. And would never see."

"The obscenely wealthy?"

I sat on the edge of the bed.

Sarah crept up towards me. Knelt on the floor before me. Her hands on my knees. "Come on," she said. "I'd like to know."

"What do you care? You were pissed at me forever about it. You thought I wasn't giving you fair time."

"At the time," she said and ran both hands up my chest. Wrapped them around my neck. We laid back. "I was under the impression that I was the love of your life. I didn't realise it was money."

"Oh fuck, Sarah, is that what this is?"

"No," she said. She was standing in the doorway. She folded her arms over her chest. Covered her breasts. "I want to know why you kept in line with him."

"It was a huge opportunity!"

"A career choice that went south, Allen? Come on. Look, you may not think I know you, you may think you have all these, ah, these walls up around you. You guard yourself. You always have. I tried for years to fix you. I tried, Allen. I tried to get you to look in the damn mirror and you wouldn't have it! You followed your own way and me, your parents, your friends; we could all go to Hell! Look at Luthor! I'm sure this is all his doing. He's kept you here out of fear and you can't even find the decency to tell him where he can stick it? You don't need him. And if you're right and Superman's gone for good, why does he need you?"

"Sarah," I said. Thickly. Deep and gross and judgmental. "It's not that simple. You can't just uproot yourself because you don't like your life. There are steps you have to take. Look at you—where are you living now? What are you even doing with your life? You've been here, you've shared my bed. You tracked me down like some fucking stalker bitch. Tell me. Love of my life. Tell me. What are you doing here?"

She was silent. For a long moment. Just staring at me.

"I have a husband."

I laughed. "Oh this is rich."

"Allen—"

"Who is he? Some fat slob, I imagine? Some me-love-you-long-time sad sack asshole who threw a ring at you the very second he saw you across the bar? And you said yes? Because you always say yes."

"We met at university," she said. "A week after your friend was shot. You know, I was sad for a while, Allen. For you and your friend. I was scared. I didn't know what you were doing. I didn't know if you were still alive. And then one day I stopped. It was that easy. I moved on. I sucked it up and I moved on because that's what people do! You think, for whatever fucking reason, that you're entitled to your anger and your loneliness and you aren't. You aren't, Allen. Not anymore than anyone else is. You've been allowed to—to luxuriate in your own tragedy for years. Years! Eight years you spent away from the world. In your own mind you had it all—and lost it—and you've immobilised since then. And that's all for you, isn't it? That's just life."

"You don't understand," I said—

"I think I do," she said. She got close. Hands on either side of my face. "There was a boy here once. I loved him. I meant it when I asked you, Allen: what happened? You were so brilliant. And then that man got his hooks into you. And who knows why? To this day? What did Luthor ever see in you?"

I was silent. So was she.

Then she turned. For the bedroom. Gathered her clothes up.

I sat the kitchen table. Rubbed my eyes.

I could have told her the truth. It wouldn't have made a difference. Or any sense. And so she wouldn't get it. But it would be the truth.

She came back out a minute or so later.

"Sarah."

She stopped. Smart jeans and heels put her at my height—shoeless and naked as I was, I lacked a good few inches on her still. She was wearing one of those nondescript white deep-vees, the ones that cut way down on her chest and showed the upper curves of her breasts and glorious lack of bra beneath.

"Okay," I said. "But I'll tell you why Luthor chose me."

She sat at the table. Slowly. Watching me watching her. She became aware she wasn't wearing a bra, aware that I was staring at her chest to avoid eye contact. Even so I saw her face turn red.

"Luthor saw me as a weapon. A human weapon, okay? One he could use in his war with Superman. Remember the Cadmus thing, back whenever it was? Dozens of missiles fired at the city? Countless dead downtown? Remember the Panic in the Sky? The Final Night? All those stupid names that sound like Gustavson at the fucking _Post_ made them up? They're not made up. They're real. They happened. Our stupid planet is, and always has been, a breeding ground for alien fuckuppery. Invasions, little micro-wars, superpowered muk muks killing each other for nothing. We never saw it when we were kids. The suburbs are nice like that. The thing is, Sarah, Superman showed up twenty years ago or so, yeah? Luthor immediately went to work trying to kill him. All these superheroes came out of the woodwork. This Bat character down Gotham, some guy in a red suit runs really fast out west. The world was changing. No one knew how to deal with it."

"Allen—"

"Luthor hates Superman. To this day," I said. "No one is sure why. I don't know. I'm sure Lex doesn't. What seems likeliest, and the reason I left after he shot Jesse way back when…was because I saw it happen. I was there. I know what he said to Superman and what Superman said to him. And I didn't want to be a part of that world anymore. I watched Lex shoot my best friend. And I realised I'd be seeing that forever. Luthor wanted to make us examples. The kinds of people who don't need saving. So we could…transmit the message. Spread the gospel according to Lex Luthor."

"Which is?"

"We don't need a Superman. And look at us now. Super-free for eight years."

"And this is why you're hiding out here on Madison Avenue? Shellshock?"

I gave her my best glare. "Oh, he knows exactly where I am. He knows you're here. I'd bet my ridiculous salary on it."

"But," she said. "I mean, why stay?"

"Because I have this gnawing feeling Superman isn't gone for good. That he's going to come back. I can feel it. You ever have a gut feeling?"

She smiled weakly. Came over to me. Bent down and kissed me.

And pulled away. And said, "Once. About you."

"Yeah?"

She didn't say anything.

But she kissed my forehead.

And said, "I was wrong."

And then she was gone. Out the door. Down the stairs. Gone.

Forever.

* * *

**Downstairs.**

**Jesse.**

He had been saving up some of the money from Luthor, all those dirty bills from dirty jobs—Olsen, Grant, Lombard, so on and so forth—to buy a really great car. He settled on a good one. Mustang. V-8, manual, reclining bucket seats, colour jet black, options you name it.

Sitting quite comfortably in the driver's seat, Alex in the passenger's seat, his head in Jesse's lap.

Jesse finished what was left his Super Latte from Sundollers and put the empty back in the cup holder. Ran his hands through Alex's hair, thin and blonde and perfect. He was watching the front entrance to the apartment complex, 1940 Madison. A good neighbourhood, which was different from it merely being a rich neighbourhood. He had been watching surreptitious or an hour or so. Ever since Sarah Andrews Kendall, or was it Kendall Andrews? His info may have been faulty—ever since she entered.

Now he was playing the waiting—

There.

He fumbled his mobile out of his pocket. Autodialled Crane.

"She's on Madison. She'll be home in twenty minutes. Texting you the address now."

And he did.

Then he looked up at the building. Once. Briefly.

He frowned.

Then he put the Mustang in gear and sped off.

That night the Scarecrow kidnapped and tortured Sarah Kendall Andrews. Dumped her corpse in a storm drain outflow.

The next morning, Gustavson and the _Post_ ran her obituary.

* * *

**Seven years ago.  
Frank and Lex.**

Berkowitz flew back to Metropolis in winter.

It was actually quite a sight, even with the snow. It made it all seem brighter. Obnoxious, to a commonplacer, someone who didn't care or who had grown tired of the city. But no, not Berkowitz. He didn't have to remind himself how beautiful it was, this city. And it was. No getting around that. Quite different from Santa Prisca, under whose harsh sun he'd languished and recovered these past years. It all felt so long, protracted, in his memory. Except when it didn't. And on those days, it seemed only yesterday he was in Metropolis. Sitting in City Hall, a place of honour. And honour to his name. A good respectable man, or so he desperately wanted to be, doing a good respectable job.

Way back in a long time ago, when he was in law school at Columbia, Berkowitz memorised the founding story. How Metropolis Came to Be. Of course he was up in New York at the time, and so couldn't be around for a walking tour. To say, look there's where Silas Harmon bought the island from the natives for twenty bucks. Big amount back in the day, don'tchaknow. You couldn't buy a bad steak on Fifth Avenue with that kind of dough these days. And look there's Suicide Slum—even a city like this, all lights and human energy, biological dynamos going a million hours at a time, even the slum was lit up. Slim, modern, minimalist beauty. Reaching high and higher still. When he had been a kid, Berkowitz stood on Schwartz Street in the Slum and just looked up, and he thought to himself, one day these buildings will go all the way to the moon. He never told anyone that dream. Pie-eyed as it was, he had to confess he still imagined it happening. Someday.

Because Frank Berkowitz's problem is that he just loves Metropolis too much. He's in love with its people, its character that no newspaper, not Lane or Kent, not even Luthor, can accurately nail down. It's just—

The captain over the intercom: "Folks, ah, we've got to circle around a bit, Metropolis Tower reports icy conditions on the runway, ah, hang tight and thank you."

The city hadn't changed. How could it?

He had, though.

Fully a decade ago, some nameless assassin shot him through the chest. A high-velocity shot from a high-velocity weapon, thankfully it didn't kill him. And over these past few years he's so vacillated on that emotion.

Hurrah, you're not dead. Oh, but you're still alive. And what's the price of that, Francis? You used to be so much more. There used to be, or so you imagined a bright spot in your chest where resided Metropolis, the city you love, and your own sense of self. The duty you have to it and its people. Your whole life, long or short, has been in public service, Francis. Serving others.

_Service before self_, as Dad used to say.

There's an old man on this plane flying to take back the city that wasn't really his to begin with. And there's a cold stinging wound in your chest where purpose used to be.

The plane circled the airport, waiting out the snow storm. And Berkowitz thought back to the Slum.

And his optimistic appraisal of things, of the city, he thought, maybe it wasn't so right.

Maybe the lights are there to hide things. Maybe you can hide in the sun; why waste time looking for a shadow? Hide in plain sight. Light it all up. Be obnoxiously open.

Hide in plain sight, he thought. Where no one would think to look.

_Frank. You know what this is._

Luthor.

_And his hooks, sinking into you._

He tried to do the right thing. Years before. When Superman first debuted and Luthor contracted some terrorist to, well, terrorise his yacht, the Sea Queen, Berkowitz had been aboard. Subjected to the crazed whims of a bunch of nuts with assault rifles. And when Superman showed up and showed those mercenaries what power was, Berkowitz tried to do the right thing.

He tried.

He deputised Superman to arrest Luthor. Luthor, who had never gotten so much as a detention in grade school. Luthor, who admitted to Superman that he'd hired the terrorists to harass the Sea Queen and see what happened; to test Superman. And eventually, bring him over to Luthor's side. Superman said no, and took everyone' favorite billionaire into custody.

Luthor took it personally. And has ever since.

He could never control Superman.

And he's controlling you. He shot you. Or had you shot, Francis. Paid for your convalescence. Constructed the situation by which you've now returned to Metropolis to Mayor It Up once more.

A job you're good at. And happy doing.

And you think, maybe, it might just be a bad idea. _Skill is not the same as desire, or fulfilment._

He made a sour, disappointed frown. Looked out the window.

He kept looking at the city. And his thought process ran to the schizophrenic.

Good town, bad town. Luthor. Superman.

Himself. Burdened with dreams no one else even asked for and didn't bother to help with when he assumed them. You want to be Mayor, Frank? Go right ahead.

Schizophrenic. Be Mayor because you want to make real change and you can't do that from a law office or some ward uptown. Be a man because that's how you'll be mayor. Because real men know responsibility and take it on when faced with it. When no one else wants to.

He tried.

Man, how he tried.

He kept thinking that. Even as the plane started its slow descent.

And as Luthor's LearJet circled the Murphy Anderson International Airport, Berkowitz reclined in his seat and closed his eyes. And waited.

A shadow fell over him. Luthor coming up from the back of the plane. Luthor, sitting down in front of Frank, in the chair on the other side of a petite coffee table.

Luthor smiled easily. "How are you doing, Frank?"

Berkowitz's eyes rose. "Oh fine. Just thinking, I suppose."

"You're upset about coming back?"

Berkowitz waited. Looked out the window. Back at Luthor.

"What about an election? Is Poole ready go five round with this warhorse?"

"Ha. I'm afraid Poole's dead, Frank. Aneurysm. A while ago. Brinkman's been running the place into the ground ever since."

"Brinkman?"

"Yes," Luthor said. "He's quite inept. A while after you left, Poole made him deputy mayor. When Poole fell over dead in the middle of a vote, the aldermen sucked it up and made him the boss. I've never quite seen anything like it."

"Hm."

"What?"

"So what about an election?"

"Don't worry," Luthor said. "I've got your majority paid for. The _Ledger_, the _Post_ and the _Star_ are all running supporting editorials. Affiliates distributing these as far as Keystone. WGBS and my stations are in for you, too."

"And the _Planet_?"

Luthor smiled. "You just leave the _Planet_ to me, Frank."

Berkowitz kept his eyes on the window. Beyond, through a snowy haze, he saw the light-letters on the WGBS Building. _Edge_, he thought. _An old rival. Are you out there, my friend?_

"Lex."

"Yes."

"Why did you shoot me?"

Luthor looked at him. Judging eyes. If age and youth had the same fire, they combined it in Luthor's eyes. He cracked a thin and sinister smile and leant forward.

"I needed you out of the way," Luthor said. "I needed a freeze. Disaffection and worthlessness in City Hall, to show them what a strong hand looks like. A human hand. I never agreed with your policies, Frank, but I know you as a person. You and George Taylor—the thing I like about you is that once you're bought you stay bought. Getting you there was always my problem. Superman took it from me all those years ago."

"And now you want to buy me again?"

"Fff. I had you bought the moment you woke up in Santa Prisca."

"And if I say no?"

Luthor got in his face. "If you say no. Well. There is something you should know about me, and the people I work with. The people that are about to turn this world upside down. We deal with right or left. Politicians, Suicide Slum's worst whores, even the goddamn Salvation Army. There is no collateral we don't use. There's nothing I won't sacrifice."

"I'll—"

"You'll what? Call the police? You think they can stop me? We are legion, Frank. Beyond authority. And cause and effect. And these frail, stupid little bodies. You think you have any power here? Anything to do with your name, your position? Your money? You are disposable, Frank. And now that you find yourself a little backbone, you've become even more useless. You will do what you're told, you little shit. Because if you don't, I will take you into the middle of the ocean and feed you to a million terrible things that have nothing to do but eat your heart. If you doubt that, say no, and wake up tomorrow at the mercy of the new King of the Seas. Do you understand me?! You are NOT the hero here, Francis! I am! Who saved you from that assassin so he could restore you? Give you some meaningful work to do with the rest of your life? I did! So any objections you have can be kindly stifled, because I'm in charge! This is my world now, Frank! My world!"

Then, Luthor was quiet.

"My world," he said. Calm. Depressive. He looked out the window. The city was getting closer and lower in the window. Then he looked at Berkowitz. "You're just living in it."

Berkowitz was silent for long, untold minutes after that. He swallowed the lump of saliva and fear at the back of his throat and rubbed his face. AN old drunk's trick.

"Your propaganda still mean anything, Lex? The old mayor come back to save his city in its darkest hour? How am I to do that? And where's this darkest hour?"

"The terms are the same we discussed in Santa Prisca. Sign over utilities to LexCom and LexIn. Team Luthor will supplement the Special Crimes Unit. Total consolidation and promulgation of the official narrative. A new Metropolis for a new century. And your office making it all legal. A world without need of superheroes, Frank. That's the world to come."

"What about the Aldermen?"

"Fuck them."

"Who else?"

Luthor snorted. "The usual troublemakers. Sawyer and Turpin, maybe Henderson. The entire staff of the _Daily Planet_. Nothing I can't handle."

Berkowitz was silent for a moment. Touching a hand to his mouth and looking at the snow storm.

"You've thought of everything."

Luthor smiled. "Not yet."

* * *

**Seven years ago.**

**Lois and Clark.**

They were having lunch at the Paradiso Café, an outdoor affair on Fifth, some blocks up from the LexTower. Noon of a spring day. A brisk wind kicking up the avenue, the green umbrellas over the patio tables ruffling in the breeze. A smattering of dark clouds east, high and sparse, blowing over fast and forgiving them rainfall. Lois with a Monte Cristo and a cup of Minestrone, Clark with a turkey burger. Mojito for the lady, Iced Tea for the gentleman. So it was a classy place, she had to admit. Classy still because she liked using the word classy. She looked down the street at the LexTower, blocking out the sun with its own arrogance.

_Classy_, she thought._ So many things in this town aren't anymore._

"So Lois," Clark said and wiped his mouth. "I've been thinking of the future. Our future, I mean."

"Just the generic, sweetie, or did you have a plan?"

He smiled and cocked an eye. "Well. The _Planet_'s over and done with. As much as it hurts. However strange it is to say it, I think Perry's enjoying his newfound retirement. And I think it's safe to say Lex has cowed Mister Stern away from fighting anything."

"Doesn't matter," she lied. "We made the decision to go on our terms, Clark. Not on Lex's. Are you telling me you regret that?"

"No," he said and meant it. "Marching to his tune would have been more disastrous. Are—you sure you're okay with leaving? I mean, you loved that place."

She paused and thought about it. "True," she said. "It was my life. For years. But, you know, turns out I met this guy that showed me I could have a life outside of work. That legacy wasn't just the hours you put into something, and not even your blood and sweat."

"And?"

"He showed me life, and my future, could be about more than words in newsprint."

"And this guy," Clark said and narrowed his eyes. Lowered his glasses and looked over top of them. Probing. "You don't resent him for feeding you what I'm sure was a tough pill?"

"The truth hurts," she said and pointed the business end of her spoon at him. "But it was worth it. You remember what I was like when we first met? Even I don't want to remember that crazed nutjob. So, yeah, I don't resent him. He made me a better person."

"Uh-huh. And tell me, who would this magic man be, Lois?"

She smiled. "Some smalltown yokel, used to work for the _Daily Planet_. I think he did the farm report."

That got a laugh. And to a large extent she had to admit it was true. After all those years of chasing leads. Scoops and tipped fences and hostage situations and narrow escapes. All the stuff newspapermen—and women—shouldn't do, ever, she did. Or had done. And Superman had saved her. But it was Clark Kent, through everything else, that showed her life was about more than proving yourself. "Sometimes," he'd told her once. "You don't need to prove yourself. Sometimes the universe accepts you anyway."

And she loved him even more for that. Much to her own surprise, as it turned out.

"Anyway, you're right," she said. "I'm fond of my freedom, Smallville. Working for LexCorp's _Daily Planet_? Writing under his thumb? Not something I want to have on my résumé."

He made a face. "You have a practised cynicism, Miss Lane."

She smiled and reached across the table. Patted his hand. "Keeps me from settling into a quiet life. Next thing you know we'll be playing cribbage with the retirement home irregulars."

"Sounds like a good baseball team."

She laughed.

Yes she loved him. Not that this was ever in doubt in her mind. She merely liked to remind herself of it. Just liked to say it. Spend so much of your life doing unorthodox things—living with the very not-nurturing General Lane—and it changes you. Makes you a harder person. Years ago when Clark Kent was young and new and naïve on the _Planet_ staff, he had met that version of Lois. That harder, sterner, person. Always reaching, always trying to prove herself. Always trying to be better. Best.

And then she'd met Clark. He had looked inside her and seen something different. Something better than the façade she was peddling. He looked deep. And he encouraged her to look deep too. "I know," he'd said, "you put up a tough act. But I love you anyway. You are a puzzle. A living challenge. One I want to share my life with. I know there will be difficulties. Dark days. But there will also be great days. I'd like to face them. With you. Together."

At that, she'd taken his hand. And his word.

What they found, together, was better than anything she could have hoped for.

Optimism.

Hope.

Life.

She finished the Mojito and winced at the end of it. "Uuh. Rum's all settled. Come on." She grabbed her purse and flung a twenty on the table. "We happen to have every afternoon free, from here until Lois-Gets-Tired-of-Her-Husband-Day, so where do you want to go next? Farm market? Bookstore? Back home? I could make you some top-notch Chai, you know."

He smiled. "Bookstore sounds good. I've been meaning to check out the local section, see what's what."

"Great." She pecked him on the cheek and threw her purse over one shoulder. They started down the street.

And they slowed, and then stopped three blocks down. When a wind tunnelled up Fifth and a storm cloud settled motionless in front of the LexTower.

A storm cloud. As tall as the building itself. Dark and shapeless. Motionless.

"Clark," Lois said. "There's no wind."

He frowned. Squinted behind his glasses. "I can't see through it."

"It's blocked?"

"No," he said. "If something's being blocked at the source it usually gives me weird feedback. This is different. It's like there's something inside, but it shouldn't be there. Or isn't, really. Hard to tell. Nothing on heat or infrared either."

"This is one of those things isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so." Then he looked at her.

Around them, amid the drive-up plaza entrance to LexCorp which also served as the beginning of Fifth Avenue as Siegel crossed it, the usual lunchtime crowd gathered. All staring at the storm cloud.

Clark looked around at the gathering crowd. None of them noticed him of course. They were all fixed on the cloud.

The expanding, darkening cloud.

He turned back and grabbed Lois by the shoulders. "Get these people out of here."

Thunder. As loud as any he'd ever heard, even the infamous tornado of 86 that ripped the far and half of Smallville to pieces. But a different kind of thunder. Louder. And longer. A bass drum, he thought at first, making a sound you only make when you beat the hell out of the head and then drag the mallet across it. An extensive thunder, a rolling, recurring bass line.

Behind him, Lois was trying to herd the crowd away, up Fifth, in either direction on Siegel. Away, she kept saying, just go.

Then the lightning came.

But not really lightning, Clark thought. Regular lightning looked different too. Brilliant and broad, too erratic, existing too briefly in our world before dying out, searching, searching, probing always for the ground, for its own strange home.

This was different.

It only looked like normal lightning, that electro-chemical sizzle was still there, but the sprawling randomness was not. This was a focused phenomenon. With a focused master behind it.

Straight beams of light, sizzling on their fringes. Barely the same phenomenon, he thought. And for a moment, oh so brief. Too brief, he thought. Clark was a nerd in seventh grade science again. From his stool in the science lab, watching a summer storm tear across the plain.

Lightning. Beams of brilliant light shooting straight from the cloud, down to the surface pulverising Luthor's beloved granite plaza and its priceless juvenile redwood he had flown in last year. Lightning. He couldn't stop thinking it.

Four beams. In a row. Straight into the earth, arcing electric sizzle between them.

Then he watched something come out of the cloud.

A face. In steel. Big as life. Glowing red orbs where eyes should be. Glowing blue diodes where a forehead should be, in a broad v-shape. An electro-chrome lattice for a skull. And swaying, preying tentacles underneath.

The skull ship.

Brainiac.

He tore off his suit in broad daylight.

And then Superman was in charge.

He was in the air. Flying straight for it. Building up as much speed and power as he could in such confined urban quarters. And then—

He stopped. A flare, a light. A blaze of energy, or a distraction.

He threw up an arm instinctively to shield his eyes from the flare.

Lowered it a moment later.

And stared at Brainiac.

Now this was different.

The old green alien was gone. In its place, this new monstrosity. Steel and metal-_Nth metal from the looks of it_, he thought-and glowing green energy. It_'s gone fully tech_, Superman thought. _Interesting_.

The reflective, obnoxious steel encasement that was calling itself Brainiac. Superman looked hard at him. Focused. Tunnelled within. And yes, deep down, he saw, there was a brain. Beneath the diodes and the force fields and the Thanagarian Nth metal chassis—that was horrifying enough, Superman thought—there was something. Organics. Life, in a fashion. Buried. Suppressed. Made different and lesser by the additions of technology around it.

He didn't even think of Brainiac as a 'Him' anymore.

"Brainiac," he said.

The cyborg's eyes glowed, radiant and green, micro-Nth slits narrowed in a pale imitation of a human eyebrow as it stared right back at the Man of Steel. And hovered there above Fifth Avenue, cold hands—claws—clasped expectantly, and patiently yet, behind its back.

"Kal-El," it said. "This was an expected outcome of my arrival. It is good to see you again."

"What do you want?"

"The same as to everything else, Kryptonian. The collection of this world's data and its subsequent destruction, in fulfilment of my program."

"Your program?" Superman was unimpressed. He hovered up to stare Brainiac in its unmoving robot face. "What happened to merely collecting worlds? When did Vril Dox the collector become Brainiac the destroyer?"

"Your adventures among humans have left you blinded to the universe outside, Kal-El," Brainiac said. "The next step in my evolution demands ascension to techno-organic perfection. The frail form of Vril Dox is gone. Behold now a new paradigm. Beyond flesh and blood, and cause and effect. A new concept for a new era of biological existence. Look upon the technological avatar of the world that is to come. A world I now offer you an opportunity to explore and create, Superman. At my side."

"You know I can't do that."

"You would forfeit the legacy of your father to protect your adopted home?"

"My father's legacy," Superman said, "was the protection of those he loved most."

"And yet he sent you away."

"I honour my father's work. What do you do, Brainiac?"

"As ever," the World Computer said. "The pursuit of ultimate knowledge is my highest priority."

Superman scowled. "You're a monster. A stain on this universe, and a perversion of everything Jor-El fought for."

"And this is your committed response?"

"Absolutely," Superman said. "You can leave now. Or I'll have you removed."

Brainiac's arms, spindly, ghastly, Nth-appendages, spread from its body in a wide offertory, angelic and terrible. Behind it, the bottom of the Skull ship opened. Green light shone obnoxiously from the unknowable interior.

The drones poured forth. Countless copies of Brainiac itself. Pouring out of the Skull Ship in countless droves. Superman gave up counting after a hundred and fifty. Below them, and up Fifth Avenue, soon to be all across the city, the drones attacked. People. Buildings. Automobiles.

Brainiac was attacking life.

Three drones came up behind Superman and restrained him, at the arms and the third placing skeletal claws on Superman's ears. He picked p the sound of nanotubes powering on. If he tried, anything, they'd probably vaporise him.

Probably.

He waited.

Superman scanned them quickly. All Nth metal. He looked back at Brainiac and said, "What have you been doing?"

"I have harvested this universe's centres of power, Superman. While you busied yourself about the affairs of this earth, I have attained godhood. Look upon the corpses of your colleagues, dishonoured and stripped of all significance, save this: they are suitable trophies."

Then more drones brought out a host of bodies, limp and bound in Nth stocks. Brainiac's poor medieval humour. And restrained by the drones, Superman watched. And remembered. And placed them all.

Every single Guardian of the Universe. Carol Ferris in her Star Sapphire suit. Adam Strange. Shayera and Carter. Five more corpses of Green Lanterns—he recognised Kilowog, and Tomar-Re, and Katma. And his eyes grew wide when he saw Kyle Rayner among them.

At that, he went for Brainiac. Ripped free of the drones. Whirled around in midair and stripped one of its arms, and used the arms to beat the heads off the others. He dropped the arms casually. And stared back at Brainiac.

"Leave them to me," Superman said. And then his eyes ignited, barely restraining the heat in them. "I will give them the honour they deserve—the honour you took from them."

"Science," Brainiac said. "Exploration. These are my new terms, Kryptonian. Honour them. Join me. Or I will take everything from you."

"No," Superman said. "I will always refuse you."

"Then you will always die."

Then Brainiac fired its own heat vision at Superman. Blasted him back. Away, away from the new Brainiac. Safely away from the Skull Ship.

The tentacles on its underside waved aimlessly for a moment. Then stopped. Zeroed on the Man of Steel.

Then their razor-ends exploded. White hot electric sizzle overcame him. Paralysed, all Superman could do was scream. Writhe.

Agony.

And through the pain, only one thought:

Where had Brainiac been?

_How did I miss this?!_

_A simple and sad answer: he'd been everywhere, and I had stayed here. Inert. Who knows where he went exactly—who ever knows our enemies if we don't even know ourselves?_

_Oh Metropolis._

_Lois._

_I fear I've failed you._

The beams let him go. He fell to the earth, in front of Luthor's ruined plaza and the redwood, now just a burning stump. Ahead of him lay Fifth Avenue. On his hands and knees, Superman looked up.

It was burning.

Buildings leaked smoke into the darkening afternoon sky. Bodies. Burning cars. Fleeing civilians, looking at Superman, subjugated before the might of Brainiac.

_How did it come to this?_

"Superman." Brainiac's voice, calm and collected—no, collective. The voice of a million nanolives in his new shell, his war booty from Hawkman's home. "I have humbled you in record time. It is finished. My vessel contains Central Batteries from the following devastated worlds of the Lantern Corps: Oa, Zamaron, Okaara, Odym. I have harvested the natural resources of Thanagar into a fitting host, and I have utilised and upgraded Rannian Zeta Beams to arrive on your doorstep. And you did not have the wits to see this. You could not even save your beloved Daily Planet from austerity."

_What?_

_How—_

Slowly. Painfully. Superman stood. And turned to face the World Computer.

"How did you…"

"Luthor," Brainiac said, "is as unrivalled a partner as ever. And you, Kryptonian. You have failed. Now. Kneel before me. And await your own pitiable ending."

Brainiac raised a hand. Blue-white electricity arced forth, and shocked Superman to his knees. And for some reason, he found himself, thinking, he took it. Took the pain. The humiliation.

_He's right._

_ I couldn't even save the Planet. Not even from Luthor._

_ A human. Just a man. As flawed and stupid and killable as the rest of them._

_ What was I trying to prove?_

_ Oh._

_ Father._

_ I tried._

_ I tried to live among them. Tried to be the example they needed. So that they could rise above their pain and their self-destruction._

_ It's._

_ It's in their nature to destroy themselves._

_ Don't let this happen this way, Father. I beg you._

_ I've never begged, but I beg you, Father. Give them an example. A better one than I._

_ Brainiac is right._

_ I've—_

The electricity stopped.

The pain stayed.

"Superman!"

Achingly, he turned around. His vision cleared just enough to see her.

Lois.

Amid the chaos and the urban flight—all those people running away and yes they should run, yes, run from death and technology—there was Lois. She had been leading an exodus.

_Who are you, Kal-el?_

Superman, she says, and runs to your side.

No.

Go away. Run.

He saw Brainiac, standing over him, three rings on every finger, and a single orange one embedded in its chest cavity. Green Lantern, Star Sapphire, Blue Lantern. Will and Hope and Love. And Greed at the centre.

_I was right about one thing_, he thought. _You are a perversion. Worse. A joke. A bad alien, that's what you are, Vril Dox._

_And I?_

_I tried to show them a hero._

_For a time, I succeeded._

Lois was proof.

He stood.

"Get behind me," he told her. And she did. And from nowhere he summoned courage. Courage Brainiac didn't know how to muster.

"Your companions are your undoing," Brainiac said, and lifted a hand.

The same electricity came forth.

And then time stopped for Superman.

She leapt in front of him.

Took Brainiac's nanobullet.

He stopped. His jaw froze, open. His eyes wide. Grime and soot and sweat soaked through him.

She lay twisted and strange on the asphalt.

He bent over her. Hand on a side of her face.

He was crying.

"Lois," he said and kept saying it. Her eyes fluttered open once.

She smiled.

"I think he got me."

He laughed a nervous, knowing laugh. And looked her up and down. Greasier, dirtier, than him. Dying quickly, with a gaping hole where her insides had been five seconds before.

And.

All those people she saved had gotten out of harm's way. They were gathering around her. And around Superman. Watching this woman, who had given her whole life, long or short, to Metropolis. Its people. To truth.

The hole through her stomach, it—

"You're."

"Shut up," she said. "I know. Clark."

"Lois."

"No clichés. Kick his ass. Him. Luthor. All of them. Superman wins. He always—"

Then nothing.

Superman shut her eyes. Then he stood.

He tuned them out. The milling crowd around him. All of them staring at the man in tattered blue and red suit and the woman he loved, dead there on the street. He heard them saying his Earth name, puzzlingly, wondering who in the hell this Clark Kent was and why was he dressed like Superman.

He scowled. Superman never scowled.

And he looked up. Brainiac hovering there, silent and expecting. Glowing artificial eyes narrowed once more.

Then it retreated back into the storm cloud, following its Skull Ship.

Superman made fists out of both hands.

And exploded after it.

_Murderer_.

He went faster. Faster.

Faster. Following the Skull Ship's retreat. Following it toward wherever its master would take it to hide and rebuild like the coward he was.

_No. No more hiding. No more retreating for you, Brainiac. Not this time. _

_Lessons from Bruce, Kal-el. Not even time enough for grief or wounds._

Into the storm cloud.

And on the other side—

Nothing.

He stopped abruptly. And all his power went everywhere, and nowhere. Dissipated in its sudden lack of importance.

He looked around wildly.

The Skull Ship was gone.

A quantum trick from Brainiac. His last cruelty.

Gone.

He looked back.

The storm cloud had gone too. Its gateway properties only held in place by the Skull Ship, he imagined.

Gone.

He took a deep breath in airless space and dealt with that pain.

And pushed forward.

Into the starless void.

* * *

Two days later, they had a funeral. Close-casket of course. Even the inimitable, immovable General Sam Lane broke down when the coroner showed him Lois' body.

Luthor came forward and sponsored it, in a fashion. Sitting with the Lane family, beside the General no less, in the front row, silent as a rock and staring not at her casket but just beyond it, his presence was advertisement enough. She was dead, and now Lex Luthor was holding it over her.

So Luthor didn't say a word. Not to Perry White, who broke down in the recessional line. Not to Jimmy Olsen, who tried the stoic act and failed miserably.

What pleased Luthor the most was his own amusement at the whole thing.

He had loved her. Pretty much since time began. Since he'd first laid eyes on that tempestuous shrew that had told him, years before when LexCorp was but himself and two driven interns, that he couldn't just set up shop anywhere he wanted, she didn't care whose name was on the checks.

_Lois_, he thought, and smiled. _Challenge the beyond now, yes?_

He was having coffee in an off-room of the funeral home, reclined in a chaise lounge and affecting a sour face as he looked out the window. The illusion of grief.

He looked at the doorway and saw General Sam Lane himself standing there.

"Lex," the General said. "A little birdie outside tells me you found out who Superman is."

Luthor gave him a calm smile. "Ha. Sam, I'm afraid its hearsay at best."

Then Lane was in his face. Pointing the finger of doom at him. "You tell me who he is, the piece of shit that let my daughter die. Tell me who he is—so that I can kill him if he comes back here."

Luthor looked at the finger. Batted it away.

"When," he said. "The operative word in your sentence should be When. Not If."

Lane raised an eyebrow.

"And if I'm going to give you Superman," Luthor said. "You're going to give me something of equal market value."

* * *

**_Continued..._**


	8. Tomorrow

**Excerpt, 'Letter, Martha Kent to Clark Kent': Part of the Kal-El Legacy Exhibit at Legion Central, Now Celebrating Its Fiftieth Anniversary, CE 3012. Querl Dox, Curator-in-Charge:**

"Clark. I hope this letter finds you well. I hope you're adjusting to Metropolis well, too. Your father tells me the new apartment is really something; I trust your good taste and judgment, and I hope you take some time to meet your neighbours, and all the myriad, wonderful people the big city can produce. They can be great people, Clark, wonderful people. Friends for life, too, if you wish. And I say that because here's another thing about life and growing up: the people you choose to spend your life with will mostly be a dime a dozen. But the few that hang around? They'll be worth it. Scouts honor. Friends are the secret of life. People who build castles in your heart. They make the journey easier, better, more fun. Life, you see, is a dogpile roadtrip we all take and we try to share it with as many people as can fit into the station wagon. I hope you're fitting all the people you can into yours, Clark. Take it from an old woman: live! Love! Fly, Clark. Don't stay still. Fly. You were always bigger than Smallville. Meant for more than Kansas. I know Metropolis can give it to you—because I know the sort of man you are. I know you'll achieve great things. Moms know this kind of stuff, trust me. Love and hellos from Lana and Pete, and your father as well. We all miss you and love you very much, son. Write soon, and keep us on your mind. And we'll do the same.

All my love,

Mom."

* * *

**Now.**

**Allen.**

It's exhausting being alone. Being miserable. Two reasons why.

One, we have an amazing ability to move on. People, I mean. Put on your man pants, suck it up, move on, get over it. So people do. And they don't look back. Because it hurts. It hurts to live ceaselessly in your own past, your failures mounting up against you. There's a reason people give themselves over to God: the idea is that he can take it, for some reason, where normal squishy humans can't. Or don't. Or won't. Or maybe I'm wrong.

Two, we have an amazing ability to settle. Hunker down with your high school sweetheart because no one will ever love you the way old Jimmy did when he first locked eyes on you at the Junior Prom. Hunker down with the first idiot to give you a ring—Sarah—because who wants to die alone? And there are other things. But mostly, I think, it boils down to this. Granddad, back when he was a lowly janitor nobly labouring away at LexCorp, this was positively eons ago, liked to hand down some nice one-liners. Kiddo, he'd say, kiddo being a grown-up is about more than mortgages and cars and money. It's about settling down. You gotta meet the right girl, kiddo. I disagreed with the premise then—imagine it, skinny little ten year old full of piss and vinegar—and I still do. Don't settle. Don't give up, or in.

Stick to your guns. Have principles. First things first.

At some point, those principles are going to be all you have left.

I have no idea why I'm writing this down. I suppose I'm moody. Sitting here in this giant apartment that I don't even use half of and have yet furnished completely. The desert mirage of an adult life, bridge clubs and liquor cabinets and stonework china and Soviet propaganda posters I started collecting years ago because of a book about Laika. You collect these things because you think they're _lares_ or dreamcatchers: guardians. That they'll keep out some vague and distant bad spirits. The past, maybe, in tangible and terrible form. Reaching up to your present to pull you back. Think Gatsby.

And it's the biggest joke of all, this faux-adult life I've constructed for myself. Because the day George Taylor called and asked me to come work for him, he also said he'd received some Top Notch Reference Letters Just Gushing About Me. And the instant he said top-flight references I knew what was going on. Because I don't have any top-flight professional references. I graduated early, went back home and ran a little politics blog out of Mom and Dad's basement—nothing great, just an attempt to keep my mind engaged and piss off Virgil Brinkman at the same time. I was turning the city upside down with little more than an old coffee percolator to keep me up and a MacBook Pro. That's the sum total of my life.

There were, and are, no business connections.

Except for one.

And I saw his hooks in Taylor's back from here.

I told Taylor I was honoured and I asked what I'd be writing about, and he said anything you wish. Could be the price of tea in China, could be the mark-ups on Girl Scout cookies.

Somewhere in the city I was sure Lex was smiling.

I think of Stephen King when I think of this whole situation. How I've allowed or maybe even wanted to become part of Lex's stupid, murderous world again. I think about Jesse, and I think about a line in _It_ about there being no good friends or bad friends, just people who build their homes in your hearts. And _A Tale of Two Cities_, I guess, as well: 'I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss'. I told Sarah years ago; one of our usual low-grade pissing contests, when she asked if she was doing the right thing, going up to Occidental for her MS, I told her, 'fly. Don't stay put in this place. Take it from someone who knows. Fly'.

I think of Jesse.

Shot in the gut. Laying there and dying and Superman and I are both powerless to stop it, and Lex just disappears and that's that.

I keep expecting to see him. Even though I know he's dead.

And I get very—

I think of Lex. And the conversation he just had in my direction.

Come in. This exile, he says, doesn't suit you. Come in. You know as well as I do that Superman will return and when he does, I intend to be ready.

That's the warrior's march. His statement, here at the end of the world.

And—

I think it is. Or will be. The end of the world, I mean. I can see it. The days have gone down. It rains forever. People are surly and pissed off, withdrawn, wrapped up in their own lives. Uncaring even that Superman—the best living thing any of them will or will never meet—is gone. Uncaring even that tomorrow, Lex Luthor is going to march down Fifth Avenue, declare himself King of the Mountain, and blow us all the fuck away.

I know it will be tomorrow. I just know it.

"Free will," Lex had said, "Is the problem. There are people in this universe who could wipe your mind and enslave you without a second's hesitation. Bang. Choice hurts. Most people don't get this. You do. Which is why I'm asking. Instead of making you my servant, I'm asking for a partner in the spoils."

I told him there were no spoils. The biggest pyramid scheme of all.

I know him well enough. Never will I know him as well as Superman does. But I know him well enough. I know he'd sell his sister, his niece and his wife for a crack at the Man of Steel and probably has. I know what he thought of me eight years ago, and still thinks. That I'm the perfect weapon in his war on Superman. The perfect human, flawed, stupid and arrogant despite it all. The perfect weapon. For a perfect enemy.

I know.

That, in some way, when I go down to LexCorp and say yes to him and put on his LexoSkeleton and play at GI Joe—I will find a way to fuck it up. Some mispressed button will cause some insane backup of his to fire and obliterate creation as we know it. And I'm even pretty sure of this, too, because Tim Drake beat me over the head with it once and because I didn't have enough respect for that beating. It was necessary. Knowledge always is.

I will do something unorthodox and it will somehow cause the Earth to crack in half, cause my efforts, my spent hours and money and willpower to be gobbled up in the cracks, and that there will be nothing left. Me and Lex perhaps, just the two of us, spinning on a barren planetoid like so much Marvin the Martian.

All of these…emotions...are things over which I have no control, and I know that.

A few years ago I stopped talking to the Man Upstairs, over a philosophical disagreement that was not his fault. I stopped believing you might say (or might'nt). I came to accept, embraced fully, that I held the controls to my own life-in my own hands—in my own way. I steered the boat. There are things we can control, and things we can't.

Friendship for instance, is one of those things over which, for the most part, we have no control. The people in your life come into your life because of forces that are mostly external, beyond you, somehow Out There, unless you're an internet dater and then the medium demands action on your part. But, mostly, our friends are people who have come along the same life-rails as we have.

They are with us so briefly and so intensely that you can safely say it's a kind of white-hot love. Maybe that's just the misgivings of a depressive, lonely man here. A white hot love, though. The kind you don't see or hear advertised anymore. Think about your friends. The ones you see as much and as often and as intently as possible. You dine, you socialise, who knows maybe you even have sleepovers. Do people have sleepovers anymore? It's a white-hot love. Aristotle tells us that a Friend is Second Self. A mirror for all we are and all we see ourselves to be, and all we hope to be. Solipsists, we want to see who we are and how we got here; see ourselves and our roots in these people who come into our lives, share our experiences and then leave again.

They leave because they have to. Because their rope swings free. Because the rail that they are on diverts in another direction. One day you're both barrelling toward Denver and then your friend splits off toward Cleveland. It's the way it is. We have no control over these people and so no control over their motives, desires, or end-results. To some extent it's fatalistic: you will always split from them. And because life goes on and doesn't stop-for anyone, or anything-they rarely, if ever, look back.

You can never set foot in the same river twice. Lightning never strikes twice. If you manage to recreate those initial conditions, and you won't, not perfectly, not completely, but if you manage to complete those initial conditions-

You try to make sense of your life. You think, maybe life will stay this time. Lightning will strike twice, the timeline of history suddenly has a stopping point and that point is your personal Apotheosis. If lightning strikes twice...then you can stay. You can live out some frankly ridiculous Peter Pan fantasy. Your friends won't have to leave you. You can just. Stay still.

I think what bothers me the most, in the last few years, is the sense of abandonment of these people. These 'brilliant people' in whose hands my development as a person has rested. Sarah, my parents, Luthor, even Taylor.

Jesse.

Sure I'll carry them, part of them, with me, forever. But then, I won't. I'll move on. They will too. The railroad lines will split.

My life is not in the place I imagined it to be. Not sure if it's even in the place I want to it be. But A is A as Aristotle tells us, and you get what you get. Don't talk to me about deserving this or deserving that. Entitlement is a joke—a ridiculous facade created by people whose achievements have yet left them hollow. Achievements that mean nothing because there was no effort behind them. If a lion walks up to you, puts your gun barrel in its own face and pulls the trigger for you, there's no sport, no challenge, no reason to fight. The pursuit is what makes life.

See, I'm talking to myself again. This is not what healthy people do.

Parasites. Strangers. Pretenders. People who want something because they want it—tautology for children—and they believe they'll get it because four or five years and forty thousand dollars is the price to pay for putative success. This is the world we live in now. Whatever happened to public charity and art museums?

Little people with little lives. Schemers and shysters creating microcosmic empires they think will outlast them. Creating empires of Men, because even statues fall over. In time, even death dies. Very Lovecraft. You get the picture.

There will always be a hole. A big, gaping wound in my chest where something that was once great and useful to me was ripped out and destroyed. Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, I decided to open the gates. I had allowed myself that moment of drawing-down the barriers. To open up in a way I never had. And look what it did. I lost everything. I lost him. For a year and a half I tried to put myself back together. And who knows what happened to him? He gets shot because of my stupidity, my arrogance. And he's gone. Sarah's gone. My parents are gone.

Here at the end:

Luthor is all I have.

All those people and experiences and kindnesses will be gone now, thrown back into memory banks. Things to be revisited.

I keep expecting to see him. Or her. Jesse or Sarah. They'd be older now. More aged, I should say. Like I imagine myself to be. If I do, if I see them, I mean to give them a hug. Put my arm around them. Tell them I'm sorry for everything I did. Because I've also come to accept that part of being an adult, being a man, is bearing responsibility for things that are not yours. Not your fault. Beyond your control. But you take them on anyway. Because it's just what people do. Someone's got to own things.

Mom used to tell me that we shouldn't mourn for people we have lost or who are no longer with us. It's hard. Maybe this is just the misgiving of a lonely, depressive man, but still. It's hard not to miss people. If you can never set foot in the same river twice, you must understand it also functions as the river of memory. And of bad memories. The ones that stick and gum up the valves at night when your thoughts run to the mundane and the done.

And all your thoughts are as big as icebergs and all of them are about...people that are no longer with you. About whom you should not mourn or weep or miss. They have gone off on their own rails, toward Denver, and you have gone off on yours. And that's the news. The way it is. The good business of adult life.

Yes it's sadness I feel. Sadness at the noncontact I now have with people...with whom I travelled for years. Not sadness at achievement: that best and noblest of human emotions. Sadness at being alone. All over again.

Because I'm twenty-six years old and all the sudden it's the first day of seventh grade. That sense of isolation and unknowingness. I will go with Taylor to the _Daily Star_. End up on Luthor's payroll, because he owns the _Star_ don't you know. And I'll be alone. Much as I am right now. Alone. Of my own doing. But then, something will happen and I'll need to reach out to someone. And whose outstretched hand is going to meet mine?

And...what happens if I crash and burn. What happens when the mistake I make is irrevocable. When the other shoe finally drops and it's my rope that swings free.

When Luthor no longer needs me.

I go into the bedroom and I write this in shorthand as I go, I'm writing it right now, you're reading this far in the future when I'm dead and gone with any luck. I go into the bedroom and pull out the black metal and plastic cases from under the bed. Open them all one by one and lay them out.

A Remington 870 Wingmaster.

A Henry repeating thirty-thirty.

A Mauser C96. Broomhandle.

Good old M-1 Garand.

A thirty-eight snubnose.

Two Colt Pythons, one a six-inch barrel, the other a four.

I've never killed a man. And I spent years finding all these weapons. Hunting them down. For what? I never even fired one of them.

I take a deep breath.

And I am so supremely upset at myself for what I'm going to do. I'm going to go down to the LexTower and do what he's asked of me. I'll put on his little clownsuit and fight Superman with the best of them.

If I'm lucky, maybe Turpin or Sawyer will shoot me.

* * *

**Now.**

**Jesse.**

He had bought what used to be Olsen's apartment. As it turned out, buying straight-up pleased the landlord—and he was all too eager to dump off a dead guy's apartment.

Jesse kept the furnishings. Sometimes, not often, and not when Alex was around, he liked to imagine it was his and Jimmy's apartment. A wild and fairly insane pipedream.

Of course, Jimmy Olsen was long dead at this point; his naked and waterlogged corpse washed ashore the day after his gruesome stabbing at Jesse's hand. That corpse? Filled with every kind of drug you could think of, even the drugs that counteracted the other drugs. Symptom of an overdose, from an unknown user. One of the city's great invisible minority. The stabbing murder and the drugs were part, or so Lex had said, of a plan to posthumously discredit the _Daily Planet_ editorial staff. To show what these people were really like, and what they got up to, when their professional identities no longer mattered. And, Jesse supposed, it had something to do with Superman. As usual.

It was a pretty nice apartment.

Olsen had apparently been a fan of Wright and mixed it all with a hefty account at Herman Miller. Low, minimalist artwork on every wall, all dark shapes and cubes and slim lines. Black leather sofas, low and comfortable, an Eames chair by the window. The only thing out of place, a tiffany lamp on a clawfoot endtable by the Eames. A reading lamp.

No television.

Jesse frowned. He'd been given information enough on Olsen to paint the now-dead idiot as some cultural savant. A pathetic child, albeit a child Jesse's own age, wrapped up in immaturity and games.

_Hm. No more games,_ Jesse thought.

_Too late for that._

He was standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, a long affair bolted to the back of the door and giving Jesse a pretty good survey of himself.

His thoughts ran to the mundane and the old.

They deserved each other.

He kept thinking this. Replaying it all in his mind. Watching Sarah stroll out of Allen's building. Get in her car, some sad little Datsun, and putter across Grosvenor to the Borough Freeway. Back to suburbia. Back to her nice little life. A husband, couple of kids. Picket fence. All the clichés.

And that's the dream.

How infuriating. She was an infuriating kind of girl, that Sarah Andrews Kendall. He was there. All those years ago. At University, when the world seemed so bright and all the light shined in. He was there, listening to Allen deal with this little shit with breasts that continually put the boy in a bind by her sheer terribleness.

Jesse had sat there patiently, begging Allen to reconsider. This was not a healthy relationship. She was not a healthy or sane or reasonable person. Me me me. I I I. That's the cold wounded shrew Jesse Wright met all those years ago. The girl who doubted Allen's relationship with Luthor and took the part of Jilted Lover. As if Luthor was bending Allen over every night for reasons that Sarah alone knew. It was ridiculous. At the time he imagined her rage at Allen and perceived loss of importance—of identity—was justified. Probably. Her problem was that she didn't see the new world. One with Luthor at its head. Even Jesse didn't see that world. Not until he woke up with a hole in his stomach in Santa Prisca and there was Luthor, ready to make it all go away.

The Metropolis Mogul, as they called him. The man who had shot Jesse for no other reason than to give his little Superman war some collateral damage.

He couldn't be angry at Luthor. Luthor was giving him back his life, by pieces.

So he directed his anger at Allen. Who would never know and therefore be unable to atone. Ever. And he directed it at this horrible woman, this gravity well of sadness and suburban boredom. He'd read Luthor's files on her. And Crane's. He knew all about her.

She and Allen did not, and could not exist without oneupsmanship. And this wasn't hyperbole. He was there. He knew what they were like together. A bunch of bitchy little crows croaking at each other.

They deserved each other.

_Enjoy your two point four kids, Sarah Andrews Kendall. Enjoy that fat wastrel of a husband, that eleventh hour depository for all your broken dreams._

And this wasn't true. He supposed he hated her because she just didn't get it. People like her. People like Allen's parents, whom Jesse had met once in passing. These were people that didn't even think Luthor was real. An urban bogeyman for corporatism and terror at the end of the last century. A ghost for our times.

And that wasn't true either.

What Luthor was—and Jesse had to admit he didn't figure this out until he'd started taking Luthor's money for the contracts—what Luthor was…was beyond.

Beyond any of them. And all of them.

With all his money. His power. His influence. His building there, towering over everything on this island. His old Legion buddies.

This was their world.

Everyone else was just living in it.

This was the situation Jesse entered into on his return from Santa Prisca: serve Luthor and the old Legion. Take a seat at the right hand of the future, and never worry about anything again.

And for some reason he bought into it.

A part of him resented Allen for resisting. And for other things.

So here he was in front of the bathroom mirror, scrutinising himself.

And staring at his hip. More precisely, the square few inches between ribcage and iliac crest and navel and groin. He was thin these days, thinner than he used to be. The limp had gone away thanks to Lex but some of the psychosomatic effects of his debilitation had not: he ate less, drank more; it had cut off body fat to sick levels and gave his whole chest a drawn, lean look, skin stretched tightly over muscles and bones, rippling abdominals, prominent pectorals, a strand of chest hair from sternum to groin. A fading tan.

And rotting flesh between the iliac crest and the bottom of his ribcage. Not really rotting, that was inglorious. But…receding. He didn't quite know how to describe it.

_Leprosy, Jess. You're a goddamn leper._

The skin had gone back far enough to show metal where bones and skin and organs had once been. A gleaming steel iliac crest. Micro-pistons from ribcage to the base of his spine. And—and—

_Where are my organs?_

He didn't scream. He just stared. Like a child staring at a spider, too afraid to move because it'll jump at him. An irrational, infantile kind of scared. And how like a car crash, too, he thought. He couldn't look away.

He thought of the Terminator.

_Have you __seen John Connor no I how are you supposed to know fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb you think you're so creative you don't know what it's like to really create something all you know how to create is death—_

His Blackberry lay on the sink basin next to him, and rattled across as it lighted up and vibrated.

He picked it up. Hyperventilating, and suppressing it barely, he said. "Hello?"

"It's Luthor. The time has come."

* * *

**Now.**

**Black Manta.**

He was leaning against the framework spire of a buoy, far out beyond the borders demarcating international waters. Below him, and for a thousand nautical miles behind, stretched a bevy of sea animals—killer sharks and killer whales, three blue whales, coelacanths, piranhas, stingrays, blowfish, seahorses, great white sharks, tiger sharks, nurse sharks and their remoras, and of course manta rays. Killers and freaks, misunderstood, culturally shat upon with preconceptions and falsehoods. He sympathised. His kind of wildlife. And directly behind Black Manta in a flying-V was his Black Legion. That old and fabled group of pirates he'd united under his command years before. Part of the ongoing effort to terrorise and debase Atlantis and Aquaman, even now, years after the King's death.

He stood there on that buoy, leaning against it and feeling it roll and yaw in the waves. Ocean Master's hydrokinetic trident levelled in one hand. Even through the suit, decades ahead of its time, and the cold chrome helmet which illuminated his world in harsh red and black, he swore he felt the wind. A chill wind scouring across the water. Above him a storm cloud swirled aimlessly, moving nearer to the Metropolis skyline, a jagged row on the horizon.

Under the helmet, David frowned. And remembered.

The Legion of Doom, that very swarthy appellation for that group of the World's Greatest Supervillains. Luthor's doing, of course, because all these vast and various villain unions always seemed to be his doing. Banded together from remote parts, even Manta had to admit it was an impressive group. Manta himself, Snart and Sinestro, Barbara Minerva, the talking gorilla named Grodd, Luthor of course, and Brainiac, and another human in a burlap mask calling himself the Scarecrow—one of the Bat-clique, David guessed. And there were other idiots, and others that came and went as they pleased. But mostly it was that group. Those eight.

He liked to think of himself as the third wing of the leadership. To a large extent Brainiac came and went as he pleased. He was a machine after all; he had his own things going on. Only Luthor ever seemed to know or care. So it came to pass that Manta believed himself to be Luthor's lieutenant. The right hand of Doom. Admirable, in its way.

Which to some extent was true. Luthor had their loyalty and respect, Brainiac terrified them into coexistence, and Manta viewed himself as an advocate. A champion for downtrodden types, eager to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. Robin Hood for the seas, and all those adrift on them.

Then other things happened. Years of small fry criminal business under the sea, all of them stopped by Aquaman. Some hood you are, the King had told Manta once. Stealing my treasures, or trying to. Who do you think you are?

Well.

Manta spent years crafting a suitable answer to that question. It culminated in the outright and, to Manta, wholly deserved slaughter of Aquaman's child. No, he thought to himself. Not even a child. An infant. Defenseless. Innocent. That little gleam of hope in his eye that filled Manta with instant loathing.

Rage came natural to Black Manta. That impossible emotion reaching out and strangling anything good or beneficial. He had come, years before, to believe his own sordid past—all his mistakes and lies and missteps and associated terror—vindicated him. Made him special. And so he indulged his rage on the only other person he knew would respect it. Two angry men, battling for supremacy. And over so little. Not even a hereditary claim—that had been the province of the sorcerer Orm, once Ocean Master, now corpse in Manta's war room. Right next to Arthur Curry Jr.

It was just rage. Rage at a world so flawed. Rage that he had been trapped in this useless body for years with nothing to do about it. If Black Manta fed on that energy, that raw hatred even at his own life, it would have sustained him for a century. Buying into Luthor and Brainiac's new scheme was natural, then. It was a scheme that positioned Manta and Manta alone as ruler of the seas. Year zero for Subaquatica. And here he was, king of the wasteland. His Atlantis. A ruined, almost radioactive crater of its old self. Bombed and attacked by Black Manta himself, and his fanatical horde, the Black Legion. Age-old goons of his, normally. Given new leases and new technology in the agreements with Luthor and Brainiac. Technological upgrades to the Legion lads, new suits to make them look like extensions of Manta himself. And the leadership deal for their new world.

And, he remembered killing Aquaman. In Arthur's own throne room, no less. What a day that was:

With Aquaman away on some adventure with the League, Manta and the Black Legion shelled Atlantis until its defensive shielding went down. Then they floated in and slaughtered the guards. And any natives who got in their way. Vulko. Arion. Tempest. All of them. By the time Aquaman had returned, Manta was in the throne room impaling Mera on her own trident.

"You," Aquaman said. Quiet. Hateful.

_Hate_, Manta thought. _Take this to your grave, Aquaman. You don't know what hate is._

Manta saw Aquaman coming for him in slow motion. Eyes wide and gleaming, face tense, an angry bestial scowl on it. A mad dog.

"Monster!"

Under the chrome helmet, David scowled and turned the trident on Arthur. And in his blind rage, the King of the Seas was too fast. Or too slow. Depended really on how you looked at it. Manta drove the trident into his stomach. And kept driving when he saw the agony, the shock, on Arthur's face. The same look he had when he saw his baby dead in Manta's arms.

That surprised, sad look as all of his strength, his sense of self, that royal bearing he still carried for some reason. As all of that.

Became nothing at all.

Manta was smiling cool and cruel under the cold chrome helmet. Arthur lay bleeding and dying on the foot of his own court. His blood blossomed out of the hole in his chest and mushroomed around him. Miracles of the ocean, Manta thought.

He readied Mera's trident again. Waited for Arthur's eyes to widen. Then he stabbed Aquaman through the heart.

"Just like your kid," he'd said…

And that as they say had been that. Almost a decade ago, he thought. And he felt old. Out of nowhere, Orm's dying words haunted him.

_You don't know what power is._

David couldn't help but wonder where this vague emptiness was coming from. Was this what it meant to succeed? To achieve everything he'd ever wanted? And if so—

He looked in the distance. The storm cloud was settling over LexCorp.

He raised the Ocean Master's trident. Beneath him the sea fell to his command. Behind, the Legion fell into line. A tidal wave carried them towards the city.

Towards the end of all things.

* * *

**Five years ago.**

**Superman and Henshaw.**

Kal-El wandered for time uncounted in the starless void. Brainiac's portal had led to a region of space the Man of Steel, for all his cleverness, did not recognise. The problem, as he saw it, was one of preconceptions. Art and media had done a successful job in the last half century of depicting the cosmos outside as a swirling mess of stars, nebulae, quasars, supernovae and black holes against black silence. A tapestry of darkness to show off light. Superman knew better. He knew that if you floated at just the right spot above the Tranquillity Base on the Moon and squinted, you didn't see any stars. Just the dark.

It was a lonely thing to think about, and to remember. More so even for he Last Son of Krypton. Floating up there in space, no room to even breathe, it reminded you just how alone you really were.

And even then he found himself compartmentalising his emotions. As he was wont to do. An initial discovery led to one feeling, then further extrapolation deconstructed that first response down to a nothingness. Or at least an emotion of such minimalism that it wasn't worth acknowledging any longer. So no, he was not alone, he thought. Or he had not been.

But then, that was all so long ago.

And he had lost track of time in his wanderings out here.

He thought for a moment he might have been dumped out in a pocket universe, or some Mobius strip, endlessly recurring and driving the Man of Steel insane as he lived out the rest of his very, very long years in looping futility. But then that wasn't Brainiac's style.

Such as it was, Brainiac's style was merely to get his antagonist out of the way so he could carry on with his programme. The antagonist would be so distantly displaced that any attempt to catch up with Brainiac would be, as ever, futile.

To some extent, it was textbook. And unimaginative.

"Well," Superman said to the darkness. "No one ever said Brainiac was three-dimensional."

Even he wasn't three-dimensional. Living, thinking, in three dimensions meant seeing every angle. Seeing all sides. And preparing for them. And Superman had failed at that. Brainiac as right. Clark Kent couldn't save the _Daily Planet_ from Luthor's wrath. Superman couldn't stop Lois Lane from dying.

And so in his last moment of desperation, with his last earthly tie dead and gone, Superman chose to flee. To follow Brainiac. Through the lightning portal, and into the great beyond. Only it hadn't worked.

The barrier between dimensions was illusory. Brainiac used the portal to escape to his own destination—and to strand Superman out here in the nothingness. It had worked.

And Superman had wandered. Feeling it was punishment. He thought perhaps he was doomed, or cursed, to be out here. That this was how his life was going to end. On Earth they would say Superman disappeared, and centuries—millennia—later his corpse would be found out here in nothingness by some alien race with no idea who he was. All his life and deeds, his legacy and history of his people scattered to time. Gone and forgotten. The name—Superman, Kal-El, even that of Krypton—not even an afterthought.

_Somehow_, he thought, _they will not remember me. Perhaps I don't deserve their memory._

He hadn't done enough to save them, those people in whose lives he'd invested for more than a decade. Long time to wait, for humans. A blink of an eye for a Kryptonian. Even on his home planet, had it survived its own death, Kal-El would have lived for untold centuries. So advanced was their science, and sense of self. But humans, he thought. Such brilliant, fragile creatures.

How like animals they are. And yet how like giants.

_I tried to live among them. Tried to show by example what Goodness was. Tried to show them that they, too, could be Good. And as things came to pass, that Evil, or Wrong, was not predetermined. I tried to show them that we didn't all have to be Lex Luthor, given into hatred and jealousy and rage—that life and love are about more than that._

_I tried to show them_, he thought.

_What matters is what you do._

It was, or had been, a failed ideology. He underestimated them in their final moments. Fleeing from Brainiac's destruction, obsessed with their survival. Their own…little lives. None of them stopped to help. None would. They merely stood around and gawked and watched the love of his life—

_Oh Lois…_

He closed his eyes in quiet anger and in shame.

Eventually sleep came.

He awoke eventually. Countless hours later—days? Years? He could not say for sure, and nearly did not care. He awoke, and immediately perceived a sparkle in the distance. Or maybe closer. Nothing was certain.

He made a face.

_Lois_.

And lurched forward.

He thought of what that bright spot might be. Almerac, for instance. Perhaps New Genesis or, God forbid, its malevolent sister world Apokolips. Perhaps Warworld—and where went Warworld went Mongul.

Doubt was his problem. He wasn't sure when he noticed this doubt, this emotion of raw uncertainty and stress. If he had always had it or had picked it up from the humans.

_Stop it._

_I lived among them for years. Yet I was not one of them. I was. More._

His mind drifted.

The sparkle came closer, and clarified as he neared it. It became a sphere, a star almost, then a brilliant planetoid.

He recognised it.

And stopped. And gasped.

Immense, dark, jagged. Imposing and motionless. Its light a lie, a false attractor—he thought of the farm back home and the bug zapper on the front porch, luring flies to their neon doom.

Yes he knew it. One of the old bogeymen from Oa, told by Hal Jordan as a sideshow story to the League one day. And yet, here now and staring at it in all its dark splendour, Superman's heart sunk.

This was Ranx. The Sentient City.

Enemy of the Green Lanterns.

He tunnelled within. Squinted as he beheld the artifice down to its core.

And he saw only one life form. An artificial one at that.

He lurched forth again. Slowly. He tensed up. Better the battle I know—

Finally he landed in a barren metal courtyard. Dark razor-thin artificial spires crept from the deck and rose proudly into the night. A fierce, malevolent and artificial skyline for a living omnicidal robotworld.

He frowned. And surveyed it all.

He had never actually been on Ranx. Only heard the stories from Jordan and Rayner. He suspected it was bad, and that he'd have to do something about it someday. And yet this was beyond him.

He heard a pneumatic hiss behind him and turned to see it.

The metal was black, lined with slim neon lines stretching low and far. _Living data_, he thought, in urban formatting. _How like Clarke. Remarkable._

A voice: "Superman."

His jaw slacked. His eyes widened.

Ahead lay a body, bound by cable upon cable, implanted into the City itself. Slouched on an improvised dais of data and metal. Not a biological form either. This was cold Earth steel and Nth metal, pure selenium, palladium, platinum, titanium, silver. Together with more alien elements Superman didn't have names for. A lifetime of war and defeat and reconstruction tied up in one body and made to look humanoid.

It even had a human face. Part of one.

Superman's own facial structure, as it turned out, living and functioning, and grafted over the chromium skull. Hair and an eye prosthesis. A forehead, bold and strong. Part of a nose. A cheek, part of a chin, a jawline, an ear.

Superman stood there taking it all in. For he had not seen this being in a very long time.

"Henshaw," he said. Out of nowhere he summoned cleverness. "The plot thins."

The Cyborg Superman as he was known. Once he had been a human named Hank Henshaw. Irradiated in space, along with his crew, he became an electroconsciosuness, able to transport himself into any machine, or constitute any kind of matter into a suitable body for himself. It also happened that he was imbued with Kryptonian physiology—he looked like Superman and had Kal-El's DNA in his biological parts. And he was just as powerful. Infinitely more twisted. Infinitely more bloodthirsty.

Hank Henshaw had murdered Coast City, Hal Jordan's home. Together with Superman and John Henry Irons, Superman stopped him. Barely. Oh Henshaw had struck back a few times intermittently after that, but none of his little plots ever matched Coast City. That was the problem with your greatest hit being first: it was hard to follow up.

He was dressed in a twisted version of Superman's own suit, all dark red and a black cape, and an alien sigil on the chest diamond the Man of Steel did not recognise. The robotic part of his face shifted into a scowl—it looked even more grotesque because of its skeletal quality. The gaping hole on his jaw, somehow more pronounced in this artificial body than in a human one, made him look hungry. Zealous and angry.

"Do not," the Cyborg Superman said. "Call me that."

"Then what do I call you?"

"There is no name that applies best for me these days. I'm sure you could say the same."

"Actually I have a name."

The human eye narrowed. "Superman? Clark Kent? Kal-El. How about…Son of Krypton. The Last Son of Krypton, as a matter of fact."

"What are you doing out here?"

A tinny robotic titter. Inhuman. Superman did his best to overlook it. "A survivor of the last great war, you see," Henshaw said. "My friend Ranx here was exiled, thrown across time and space by the Green Lantern Corps. Your friend Jordan was there, I'm surprised he didn't tell you."

Superman's eyes narrowed. "Jordan's been dead for years."

Henshaw was silent.

Then he stood from his Arabesque slouch. As he did the cables separated from him in pneumatic puffs. When he finally spoke, after regarding Superman tensely for a moment, his voice, artificial anyway, was flat. Unamused. Deadly serious.

"What?"

"For years," Superman said. "Died in a fight with Sinestro. I thought you would have known."

"No," Henshaw said, easy and airy. Then he looked around. Thinking.

Finally it came to him: "Of course! The fight threw me back through time! Imprisoned me in the Source Wall and beyond, you know. I met Great Darkseid, Superman, did you know that?"

"I was there, yes."

"Right," Henshaw said. "Apologies."

"Henshaw. Focus on me."

"Why should I? You wandered into my prison cell—albeit a prison cell of my own making. Get yourself out."

Superman was quiet. Wounded, perhaps, by Henshaw's slight. He inclined forward a bit to sit, and Ranx kindly supplied a data bundle for a stool.

Henshaw's human eye narrowed. "Oh. You did not expect to find me here."

"No," Superman said. Barely a whisper. He was quiet and hunched, his fingers steepled in front of his face. Looking down at the circuit floor. Deep below them, he saw Ranx's omni-mind clicking away. "No, I didn't."

"Do you even know where we are?"

Superman looked at him.

The human face curled a smiled. "Look to your…uh, left. Focus. Use your powers, Kent."

Superman made a face. But he did. Turned his head. He was looking at first at a random bulkhead or circuit wall, something Ranx had built up in an attempt to look like more than a nano-ball, a malevolent Dyson sphere, its technology hidden to the world.

"What do you see?"

Superman squinted. He actually squinted. Through the circuit wall. Through countless other spires in the distance that comprised Ranx's skyline artifice.

Gradually, light came into view. Not light, no—nebulae. Brilliant blue strands crossing the darkness, electrocrackle radiation pouring from them in all directions. At every wavelength Superman saw it.

He stood.

As far as even his eyes could see. Forever in every direction, bottomless, topless, without form save its most basic. Battlement upon battlement, Cyclopean faces and forms of horror upon horror. Beings whose powers had been immense and terrible—once upon a time. Now, no longer. Body upon body—bound, wrapped, strapped, racked—tortured and imprisoned at the edge of Forever. So high you couldn't go over it. So wide you couldn't go around.

He knew it. And wished he didn't.

"The Source Wall."

"Yes," Henshaw said. He saw his opening and took it: "I wasn't lying when I told you you'd come to the end of the universe. But you didn't come looking for me, did you, Superman? That would have been too easy. And look at you. I had this image once, when I was in college, before my accident, before I even met you, of what you'd be like. Superman, we used to say. Strange visitor from another planet. We used to tell stories about you. The strongman, come to save us all from untimely demise. You could catch bullets, you could stop trains. Leap tall buildings, all of it. Quite a thing for a bunch of twentysomethings to take in. Kids, you know, Kent. Just kids. Brave and stupid. Too brave to become men. Too clever to believe in salvation." Then he looked sideways at the Man of Steel.

Superman looked at him.

"You offered it."

"I never asked for anything from them—"

"But you allowed it," Henshaw said "Tacitly or not, your presence created a world where worship was the only option! Save that jet, what was it, the Constitution? Save those people and what did you expect? Did you think you were going to slip back into anonymity? Did you think they weren't going to care?"

"I was just trying to help."

"You forget. I was human in those days. I know what it was like after you showed up. People were scared. Scared and impressed that you spat in the face of the system. What you did was unique. No one had heard of a superhero in decades. Certainly no one had ever stood up to Lex Luthor the way you did. Not ever. I get that it's easy to lose sight of your own distinctiveness—it's your life, after all, you live it so long it becomes commonplace. But back then? Watching your deeds was like watching God. After you, everyone got a gimmick. I had a gimmick. Luthor had a gimmick. Even you got a gimmick. Look where it got you. Stranded out here at the Source Wall. With me."

"You could return anytime you wanted."

'True," Henshaw said and rose from his cabling to levitate. "But I don't wish it."

"I can help you," Superman said. "We can retrieve living DNA, reconstitute your body. There are ways."

"No."

"Hank, I know your life was taken—"

"Shut up!"

So Superman did. Henshaw crossed his arms and floated closer to Superman.

"Hank."

"You think I want to return to Earth? That place of…pain. No. I choose to remain here."

"Why?"

"Why do you have to have an explanation?"

"Because normal people do," Superman said.

"And you and I are normal?"

"Well." Superman said it so easily and so defiantly.

"You're a human alien who can move planets and breathe in space. I happen to be an indestructible cyborg made of polyalloys and rage. You want to talk about normal? A realistic world, Kent? Would you like to know what the dregs of Apokolips, the Hunger Dogs, taught me in my captivity there?"

Superman frowned. "What?" he asked. "What did you learn?"

"Nothing I didn't already know. They threw Anti-Life at me, Kent, and I beat them at their own game. Life is confusion, chaos, death and disorder. Anti-Life is the reaper, clearing away the muck. Anti-Life helps you see, Kal-El. Or so Great, Flawed Darkseid says. I had their number."

"And then what? You nuked their city too?"

"No."

"Why."

"Because there was no point," Henshaw said. "You figure out nihilism—you see the universe end lamely, without so much as a failed effort, and it breaks you before you get started. They let me go. Nothing more their misery and their torture could do to me that life hadn't already done. No point in keeping me. And no point to anything else, either. Even Anti-Life rings hollow in the end. Subjugation and crushing order aren't enough. Darkseid and his minions have it all wrong. There is no Life or Anti-Life. Just time. The old killer of us all. Why else do you think I'm all the way out here, just waiting for the heat death of everything?"

"You would give up so readily."

"Try losing everything. It changes you—makes you less than what you are. Or should be."

"The way I heard," Superman said, speaking in pride and condescension, "You didn't just lose everything. You destroyed the city you used to call home so you wouldn't have to look at your old life anymore. So you'd be spared your pain?"

"Yes."

"And you think pain makes you special? That it excuses you?"

Henshaw looked at him. His inhuman eye glowed bright. "And you don't?"

Then Superman was silent. He looked in the distance again. The Source Wall was closer. Ranx had taken down its skyline to give him a clear view.

'Listen to me," Henshaw said. "Clark Kent. Superman. It's just a name. You and I had the same problem. We fell victim to their identity politics. Naming ourselves on their terms. Changing ourselves to fit in to their little world. And look at us. We're so far beyond them."

Superman turned around. Then an arm shot out and throttled Henshaw. Crushed circuitry in his neck as he flexed, and held the iron grip.

"You and I," Superman said. "Are not the same. I never murdered millions of people just to prove a point."

He released Henshaw. Looked coldly back at the Wall. Closer still. Ranx was taking itself there. But for what, Superman wondered.

"Answer me something else," Henshaw said. "You never married?"

"I did," Superman said. "Lois Lane."

"The journalist?"

"Yes," Superman said. "She…she died."

Henshaw' looked down. Put a skeletal hand on Superman's shoulder.

Ahead the Source Wall provided artificial daylight for Ranx, bathing them in warmth. It was calming. Almost.

"Brainiac," Superman said. "Showed up out of nowhere and attacked me. Set Metropolis on fire. She. She leapt in front of…"

"Brainiac," Henshaw said and his voice went low and angry. Mechanised, garbled and distorted. "He's a bad alien. And quite mad, you know."

"I followed his ship through a portal. It led me here."

"He wants to make the universe over in his image. A more perfect union of technology and organic life. That is his world to come. Apparently you got in the way of it."

Superman nodded. "I made my decision in the microsecond it took to pass through Brainiac's portal. With Lois gone, and my friends all dead or missing, my last links to my adopted homeworld were severed. There was no point in staying."

Henshaw's human face frowned. "You never had children with her?"

"We tried," Superman said. "It didn't work."

"You never created life," Henshaw said. "And so you focused inward. On your wife and your love for her. I envy it."

"It was enough for us. For her."

"And you don't know what it is take a life, then. Even your beloved no-killing rule has no value for you. You never created. And so you've never destroyed. Not really. You never fought for anything, did you? You merely added yourself to their little problems, already in progress. A patron saint of the status quo. All those people that die in your arms, all of Luthor's victims, Brainiac's, even mine, are still just bodies to you. Concepts. What does one journalist mean to you? Why bother attaching yourself to these people? Is it legacy? Are you trying to create a future for Krypton? One it will never have? After all, what is legacy, Kent, but repackaged promises? The radioactive remains of that planet? That suit you wear? An art museum to dead people in your Arctic fortress? Artefacts, Superman, all of them."

Superman looked at him. A level and determined look. "You're right. Remnants of the human life I had built. So I could blend in. Live among them, learn from them. And save them when they needed saving. And it's all gone now. So maybe you're right about that, too. Why bother?"

Superman thought of his father. A memory—a man he'd never met in person, only in memory banks, holoprojections and crystal data. A memory. A scientist. Surely the greatest of his kind. So great that his last thought was not of himself in the moment of his planet's destruction, but of his son. The life he created.

_Father_, he found himself thinking sometimes. _Father, what am I?_

Henshaw's hand on his shoulder again. "I am sorry for your loss, Superman."

He looked at Henshaw. "I wandered for years. Looking for answers."

"You think the universe can tell you who you are?" Henshaw said. "I have seen beyond the Source Wall. I've seen what was and what is and what will be. And I have known you for twenty years. I know what kind of man you are. I am not what you would call an honourable person. I wiped out seven million human lives to prove a mad point to Hal Jordan."

They locked eyes.

"Superman," Henshaw said and pressed a hand to his chest. The logo within the S-shield, the one Superman did not recognise, tessellated into a million microsheets and slid back. Underneath lay Henshaw's steel chassis, a support system only barely reminiscent of a human skeleton: there were ribs in vaguest of approximation, and processors, micro-marks, servitors and countless nanotubes—his internal systems. In his various reconstructions, Superman guessed Henshaw was rebuilding himself less apparently-human each time. To avoid the pain. Maybe. Inside Henshaw's chest cavity, behind sliding panes of Nth and titanium, Henshaw displayed, where his human heart would have been, a Mother Box. A sentient computer the size of your hand. It could think and feel and plan—not just plan, but manipulate. And it was usually drawn to the residents of nearby New Genesis, no doubt by their customary goodwill.

Superman wondered how Henshaw got it.

They were floating above Ranx now.

"You recognise Mother Box. It recognises you as well."

Henshaw removed Mother Box from his chest cavity. Held his hand flat and watched Mother Box float up and away. Three miles above Ranx, it cannibalised itself and opened a Boom Tube. A thunderclap overcame them both, and the Boom Tube spewed forth white light. Superman held a hand in front of his eyes to shield. The same move as before Brainiac's attack.

"You asked, 'why bother'," Henshaw said. "This is why. Take it from someone who never gives up. Give them a final glimpse of yourself. Show Luthor and his beasts the kind of man you are, and the kind they could never be."

Superman looked up at the Boom Tube.

Father.

What am I?

_You are of Krypton, my son_. Jor-El's voice, through time and space. Through his mind and that of the Fortress: holoprojections and crystal memory. Images. Glimpses of a life and a world that were no more.

The last line of a dying world. Its greatest creation.

_It was always too late for us, my son. But it will never be too late for you._

And I have tried so hard, Father…am I a c-coward?

_You have not failed. You will never fail. You will give them an ideal to aspire to. _

_They will race behind you. They will stumble, and crawl, and fall. _

_And one day, they will join you in the sun._

_In time, they will help you achieve wonders._

He often wondered what the point of Luthor was. A human: arrogant, easy to violence and self-destruction. Twenty years of rivalry had proven all this. Now he found himself wondering what the point of Henshaw was. He didn't have an answer.

And yet—

And yet, there had been a person in there once. A brilliant mind that took his friends and the love of his life to the stars. A mind too brilliant to die. And too broken to keep living. It was almost enviable. Almost.

Henshaw, Superman thought. A human. Just a man. Flawed and stupid like the rest. And yet—

He remembered Jor-El.

_In time, Kal-El. They will help you achieve wonders._

"I'll come back for you," he told Henshaw.

"No," Henshaw said. "You won't." Then shoved him toward the Boom Tube.

In the process shoving himself away.

Superman fought. Pulled. Strained. It was not enough.

The Tube was pulling him in now.

He managed to writhe around to its opening. To Ranx, shrinking in the distance, and the Source Wall beyond.

A thousand kilometres away, Henshaw allowed the Source Wall to pull him closer. To open up its binds for him. Another conqueror. Bound forever at the source of all things.

Cold and comforting, it almost welcomed him. Quantum bands of life and death wrapped him up, pushed him among the tyrants and killers of old.

Far in the distance the Boom Tube blinked out of existence.

The Cyborg Superman closed his eyes.

And waited for the end.

* * *

_**Continued...**_


	9. The Last War

**Excerpt**:  
Kal Kent et al.,_ An Encyclopedia of Despots,_ vol CVII (Ranx: CE 853,500):

"...Most perplexing, perhaps, of all the so-called villains our predecessor fought was the Coluan supercomputer Brainiac, which in organic life had called itself Vril Dox but on conversion, late in the 21st century to pure technology, expressed itself merely in impersonal pronouns. This refutation of organic existence thus created an unexpected side effect in Dox's perception of his own sentience. He came to think of himself not in any gender-specific and therefore self-limiting idiom, but as pure programming-beyond mortal biological concerns and morality, he expressed and reconstructed himself as sentient data occupying physical shells, easily disposable and easily dispatched to the far reaches of the universe in fulfilment of the prime objective: collection of pertinent features in a socio-planetary system, followed by destruction. In this way, as other scholars have pointed out elsewhere, Dox achieved simultaneous and conflicting goals: dehumanization, as well as a kind of spiritual emptiness at his own achievements. Such a profound shift in temperament suggests the assertion (or perhaps proto-invention) of advanced reasoning mechanics in pure-machine life. Ultimately, Dox's acquisition of power and apparent lack of practical application thereof spelled his downfall, near the end of the so-called Age of Superheroes. For in the sharing of trials and tribulations of species with brief life spans, Kal-El was also able to disprove and discredit Dox's false assumptions about the human race - an uncharacteristic gambit on Kal-El's part which ensured victory over Brainiac for a millennium thereafter. Kal-El's cleverness remained a feat of tactical legerdemain which the Legion of Superheroes (see vol CVI, section IX: 'The Time-Trapper') also employed when facing their own nemesis at the outer edge of reality in the year 3008..."

* * *

**Now.**

**Allen**.

_Why are you doing this?_

_ Because you're a good person._

_And. What is the cost of your goodness? _

I saw a fight between Superman and a man named Maxwell Jensen once. Years ago, and televised and so safely ensconced at home. Mom and Dad watching behind me, aghast. Jensen was the Parasite in those days, giant, purple and starving, coming at Superman like a mad dog, eyes aglow, hands a flurry of rage and need. Reaching out for Superman like he was going to take everything from him. His very life. And I suppose he was, or was going to. The footage was spotty at best. WGBS in those days was less interested in the truth and, oh, more in sensationalism. The Weekly World News as a talkie, you might say. "I want your power!" the Parasite screamed. Superman punched him, broke his stupid purple jaw, shattered his face, and yelled, "Where does it end, Jensen?"

_Where does it end?_

Well. Lessons from super-people. Where does your goodness end, Allen? When do you stop trying?

When it doesn't hurt anymore. When this inequitable little universe of ours stops being chaos and confusion and gives us some order. Some sense. Some sign that the work we put into it is rewarded. Oh but maybe the work itself is the reward. Nobility of labour, right?

Maybe. I don't know anymore.

"The world's a mess," I said aloud. To no one in particular. "I just…need it to make sense."

But it doesn't. I know it doesn't. If it did—

If it did, I'd be happy. No stress, no mania, no drug abuse, none of these scars on my arms and pinpricks in my elbows, all these markers of me trying to get rid of pain. To deal with this stupid world that doesn't make a lick of goddamned sense. All my coping mechanisms have become nothing at all. Because years ago I made a bad decision. To fall in line with Lex Luthor. To swear an oath on the altar of greed and vanity, and to participate in his insane war against Superman. Against power and arrogance and presumption.

And what kind of presumption is it that you're going to the LexTower right now? Walking right towards him. Doing what he wants. Dressing up like his Team Luthor Gestapo bullshit brigade.

_Do you want to die, Allen?_

I started crying.

No.

But it's my only option.

So I'm walking down to the LexTower. Walking through a massive bank of revolving doors, pushing hot air out and pulling cool air from the street inside. A brisk, open atrium, a supermassive wall of Carrera marble ahead and a thin oak slab that was the concierge's desk. Some blonde idiot in a stewardess uniform, almost, clacking away on an iMac and looking over the rims of her Buddy Holly specs at me.

"He's expecting you," she said and nodded toward the elevator bank.

I rolled my eyes and walked toward it. The bank was a whole wall in the next chamber over from the entrance-atrium; a subway tube ran underneath, the CrossMet express, from LexCorp to Bibbo's in the Slum. Luthor had it built years ago to bridge the gap. I remembered the editorials. Some of which—Taylor's, mostly, and Gustavson's—lauded the project. Levelling The Playing Field for All Metropolitans. A Fair Shake For All Strata.

And of course you know where this was going. Just another timely bromide courtesy of Lex Luthor. Just another stupid way to look and be better than Superman. Superman beats up bank robbers and divides people into haves and have-nots, just by existing. Lex Luthor bridges the gap. He clarifies, cuts through, and unites. So that even the most disaffected among Suicide Slum can enter free public transit and experience the wonder of LexCorp and flooring and walls made of marble that was happily nesting in the earth when Julius Caesar's friends decided to kill him.

But, you know, that's Luthor for you. Rape of the natural world and so forth. He explained it to me once in as many words. A global city, he said, was the future of Earth. An ecumenopolis, a vast corridor of light and energy from Bangor to Fort Sumter. East Coast first—no, America first. Then the world. Global technological unification. Better living, robust health, and a deathless human race living in the warming glow of an eternal tomorrow.

It was attractive to me then. Now it scares me.

I think of Blade Runner. About what happens when that endless tomorrow somehow turns rain-soaked and depressed at its own existence. The onset of obsolescence. Well. We're living that now, too. Used to be this city never slept. Like New York but better. Less crime, even though everyone says that. Time was, between Superman, Team Luthor, the Suicide Slum irregulars, the Newsboy Legion—god knows what the hell they got up to in the day—not to mention Sawyer, Turpin and the rest of the MCU enthusiastically aiming handheld rail-guns at whatever idiot happened to be ripping off the stock exchange some week…yeah.

People used to walk these streets. Now they stay inside and look at you through thinly fingered slats, blinds open only so barely that you can hardly say someone's watching from the other side. A sinister sort of Innsmouth effect going on. Paranoia. All the synonyms. And I don't even think I can say where it came from. Maybe it was always there.

Maybe this city is just as bad as Gotham. Or worse. What's worse? Obvious and open decay and death or illusory goodness? What counts for more? Soldiering through a disease or pretending the tumour doesn't exist? Maybe we hide our problems better: light up your streets and your alleys, even your homeless as props of a failed social state, one Luthor was going to save. Light up this city, this Art Deco Mecca from Fritz Lang's wet dreams. Light it up. And it becomes the cruellest joke of all. Deception. Because then this city becomes a destination, a haven for hopeful idiots who think prosperity is just around the next neon turn. And it's not true. There's your joke. There's the world Luthor has created over the decades: a myth of opportunity.

There is no opportunity here. Just obsolescence and death. And Luthor. King of the wasteland.

Adults going about their lives, infinitely busy in that HG Wells sort of way, infinitely proud and infinitely insular. Little people and little lives. And we think ourselves so big. And look at us. Look at this town. An illusion. An urban death-trap, killing you with mediocrity and its own falseness, slowly, enjoyably. A sentient arm of the corporate-industrial machine at its heart. A machine named Luthor.

We deserve him. Every one of us who sat on our asses and did nothing and expected to get rich off social largesse: Superman isn't the only saviour and not necessarily the worst. Because you see once he left, another saviour stood up. And his solutions were easier, quicker, more tenable. Infinitely worse. Because of their goodness—too good to be trueness, really—they're worse than any solution Superman could have given us. This is what Luthor does. He props you up in egotistical glory, yours and his, and then he pulls the rug out. And you're broken.

Maybe—maybe once Superman left, people suddenly remembered their own mortality. The life insurance quotient kicked in. Oh Shit Maybe I Shouldn't Do This. Because you see, those were the days. You used to be able to say, oh Superman will save us! Not now. Those days, the bright days, the good old days, they're gone.

There's a whole generation of children on the streets who don't know, and have lived in a world without, Superman.

Luthor's dream come true.

I think I've got it.

A world without Superman.

One he spent his whole life planning and hoping for.

And it's ringing hollow.

Victory is fleeting.

And he knows it.

I think he means to go out with a bang.

I stepped out of the elevator and walk down the long cinderblock hallway. I walk into a lab, the same one Luthor shot Jesse years ago. And there they are.

Luthor. A thin robot with a glowing steel carapace for a head. And Jesse.

In a Team Luthor power-suit.

And I went from zero to pissed in no time flat.

"What the fuck is this?"

Luthor smiled. Looked at me, and then at Jesse.

Luthor spoke first. "This is Brainiac. A twelfth-level intelligence, once organic, now only barely that, and much better I might say. He is helping us."

Jesse waved feebly.

"What the fuck?"

Jesse squeaked out something. "I—"

"You were dead," I said. Quiet. "I watched him shoot you."

"And then," Luthor said. "You ran way. Terrified of the world you'd been part of, and what it really looked like."

"Jess," I said. "Uh. I mean. How?"

He ran a hand through his hair. An old nervous tic of his. "Mostly dead, only, Allen. Luthor saved me. Spirited me away to Santa Prisca and then to the Mayo Clinic for rehab. He gave me my life back."

I was not impressed. "And I suppose he's been cashing in his charity ever since? Making you his servant."

Luthor: "Allen—"

"Shut up, Lex." Then I looked at Jesse. "What does he have on you?"

"Nothing," Jesse said. "I owe him, if anything."

"You don't owe him anything! He shot you in the fucking spine, what the fuck makes you think you owe him!"

"He saved my life! Which is more than you did, Allen!"

I shut up at that. "Jess."

"No," he said. "You listen to me. I woke up in that hospital alone and terrified. I had nurses and doctors yelling at me in languages I didn't understand. I didn't know where I was, or if I was even still alive. I didn't know where you were. I didn't know what was going on. So one day I'm lying there doped up on fuck knows what, probably some insanely illegal South American narcotic there aren't even words in English for. And in strolls Lex and he says he's crippled me but it's not his fault, its Superman's. And he says he can make me walk again."

"It's—let me get this straight. It's Superman's fault you were nearly killed? Lex pulled the fucking trigger! What kind of planet are you living on where—"

"Because it is!"

"Come on—"

"It is Superman's fault, Allen and you fucking know it! He's the one who showed up and decided to play King of the Mountain! We all went along with it for years because he told us there was no other way."

I looked at Luthor.

"I'm disappointed," I said. "Vastly disappointed. This bullshit didn't work on me. What chance did you think it would have with him?"

"Maybe," Luthor said in an even, pleasant voice. "You should listen to your friend. And to yourself, Allen."

"Lex."

"Listen," he said. "You've both had traumatic lives. Terrible things happened to you. Most of which were my fault. I accept that. So Jesse is here to do one last favour for me."

"Great," I said. "Knock off some rich widow for her money?"

Lex chuckled. Looked at Brainiac and said, "That's very good isn't it, ha, yes, no." Then back at me. "Ah. Mm. No. Anyway. Mm. Last favour. A chance to close the book on the world we all knew so many years ago, and begin something else."

"And?"

"And then I'll leave you alone," he said. "It's what you've always wanted, Allen, even as a boy, yes? Just to be quiet and peaceably left alone. Even when you were my pupil for a brief time. You just wanted peace and quiet."

"You're confusing expression with intent," I said. "The things I wanted when I was eighteen don't matter anymore, Lex. World moved on, and so did I."

"So you say," he said and cracked a thin sneer. "But you never did. And never would. You're too hungry to settle, too hungry to be happy. I admire it. You prefer instead tribulation. Suffering builds character, a very wise woman once told me. So I'd like you to tell me something similar, Allen. Why choose suffering? Isn't your nice cushy job evidence that you don't have to be in pain anymore?"

"That job was given to me. I didn't earn it."

Luthor made a face. Here was a supposition to try even his ingenuity. "And that bothers you?"

"Something given," I said. "Has no value. I learned that from my parents."

Luthor made a face.

"But you don't know what that means," I said. "You don't know the first thing about maturity or duty, or value. You're just a murderous, old, psychopathic, narcissistic bastard. Just because you killed your parents doesn't make you Jesus, Lex, or give you some insight on what it is to grow up without responsibility. You live in your tower here and you peddle fantasies more destructive than Superman does. Indulging every stupid little fantasy because you can afford to. And even if you didn't have the money you'd have that magnificent brain. And fucking Superman and the rest of this town went along with it for twenty years. You could kill anyone. You could commit every war crime in the book and he'd never kill you, no, not Superman. He'd die of shame."

Luthor was silent. Arms folded across a broad chest, the suit underneath still filling him out magisterially. His forehead shone in fluorescent harshness, dark eyes narrowed and his lips were even, betraying not even anger.

"You're upset," he said. "Because Superman hasn't killed me yet?"

"Someone should have done it a long time ago, Lex. It is his fault that we're all still here: he should have killed you long ago and left us alone."

Then one of his eyebrows went up. "Allen."

I looked at him through clouding, teary eyes.

"Why do you hate yourself?"

"I—"

"I tried to teach you self-worth," he said. "Because , when I came across you standing alone on my Observation Deck, you had none. You were alone and desperate for a niche. A life of meaning. So there you were languishing in some sick suburban fantasy. I gave you a life millions of people write me letters - begging to experience for themselves. And you threw it away. You spat in my face. And still I cared for you. Did you never think to ask why? Not once?"

"You were making me into a weapon against him! And you're making Jesse into a weapon!"

"Allen," Jesse said.

I looked at him.

He smiled easy and cute, and said, "You might be right."

Then he pressed a button on one of his gauntlets. The suit tessellated into a million micro-panes and slid back, clearing his torso. Or what was left of it.

Steel and titanium girders for bones now, bright and unreal in the fluorescence. A framework metal body where organics had once been. His spine—by now a glowing red latticework of cages and panes and nanotubes feeding his system and converting biomass into machinery. His eyes glowed green. One arm was nearly complete in its conversion: steel and titanium and pure selenium in a solid curving tube, terminating in three spindly fingers and a talon for a thumb.

Quiet, terrified, and breathless, all I could say was, "Jesse."

Brainiac stalked forward. "He is becoming a drone. He will be like us. He will belong to us."

"Us?"

"The new future," Luthor said. "Brainiac and his robotic drones patrolling the skies. Culling the very best genetic material from the human race for conversion."

"A testing ground for the next step in my programme," Brainiac said and clasped skeleton hands at its back. "Humans are weak. Dying, diseased and chaotic. A mongrel species unworthy of all but the basest form of invasive science. Your peer will soon yield all biological impulses and become one with the omni-perfection that is Brainiac. A nuclear campaign will cleanse this planet of all but the optimal specimens, at which point their physical forms will be deleted and their distinctiveness added to my own. Such is the ultimate fate of this planet."

"This was always going to happen," Luthor said. "We built cities under the sea to contain the survivors."

I was in a daze. I looked at Jesse.

"A nanotech payload Lex administered years ago," he said. "If you were wondering how this happened."

I held out my hand. "Come on, Jesse. We don't need them anymore."

He choked back tears. Something. And said, "I think we do, Allen."

Jesse grabbed my hand and pulled me in close. Hugged me. He was crying his eyes out. Hard to narrate that feeling—there's not really any word for that kind of emotion. You just have to see it.

Then Luthor was behind me.

I stayed still while he put the suitpak on my shoulder and pressed a button. It tessellated, and assembled around me.

Purple and green, titanium/Nth compound, he said. A high collar, up to my ears and around my head, open at the face. Crushgaunts with kryptonite in micro-compartments on the knuckles. A rhomboid power cell in the centre of the chest, honeycombed and yellow and glowing with its unknown power source.

I opened my eyes. Jesse smiled at me.

"Okay," I said, and turned to face Lex. "What now?"

He looked at me.

"End this world."

* * *

**Turpin.**

"Do you want to die, Dan?"

"Hmm?"

He looks up from the warzone of papers on his desk, opened accordion files, his computer running microfilm cycles in a harsh silver glow, black and white photographs of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Allen O'Neill, Luthor, Clark Kent, Jesse Wright, Sarah Kendall Andrews, Perry White, Joanna DaCosta, Bruce Wayne, some kid named Tim Drake, and Superman himself. A scrapbook of old and yellowing _Daily Planet_ articles, everything from Lois Lane's exclusive on the Sea Queen attack twenty-five years ago to "Luthor Lied" seven years ago.

A bibliography for the times.

He was hunched in his chair, Upmann burning down to a stub and stinging his lips and nostrils, jowls ruffling in his consternation, brow smooth and oily, as he scrutinised all the media before him. The history of the last seven years.

He had been, for some time, trying to piece it all together. How it happened, or more precisely maybe why it happened. Of course his superiors weren't interested in the Why. Only the How. How it was that Superman just up and left one day. And how Brainiac, one of Superman's most persistent and terrifying foes, also just happens to show up one day. How the World Computer fought Superman for a measly ten minutes, burned up Fifth Avenue like a frog on a hotplate, and then vanished, and with him Superman. That was the same day, Turpin also took care to remind himself, that Lois Lane, according to eyewitnesses, took a shot Brainiac had intended for Superman. Being frail and human she couldn't take it and died with a big smoking hole in her chest where organs and a heart had been. And then Superman disappeared.

Then other things happened. Turpin had had one of the lads, the new lieutenants, make him up a book for it. Technology was a dirty word in the precincts these days, and memory worse, but God knows he tried. He had Shankley make up a scrapbook or five. All the news articles from the _Daily Planet _about Luthor. All Luthor's press releases about the Planet. Every email, every letter, every memo, every sticky note, hearsay, back of a napkin written-on slur about either the bald billionaire or the feisty reporter who got what was coming to her.

Not Turpin's stance, mind you. Just seemed to be a trend.

He reclined in his chair, the oak creaking beneath him.

He puffed a last weak bit on the Upmann, and buried it in the ashtray at his side. It had taken years to compile all this stuff. Luthor's lawyers had seized all the _Planet_'s assets in its disassembly; they spun their wheels for eighteen months just to release it to an old detective.

The Planet's bibliographical war with Luthor, together with Luthor's own Sunday editorials in the _Daily Star_. Student and financial records for this O'Neill character and his friend Wright. A photo splashed on the front page of the _Ledger_, thank you Andy Killian, of Clark Kent with a Superman shirt underneath staring up at Brainiac. And of course Turpin just knew it was Brainiac.

_Super muk-muks_, he thought.

Lighted another cigar.

He was close now. So close. Close enough to walk down Fifth and plant a fucking truncheon in Luthor's brain and tell him his goose was cooked. Close.

The voice calling to him again. Sweet and authoritative. "Do you want to die?"

"Hm?"

He looked up from his piles and saw Sawyer standing there in a smart brown trenchcoat, aviators loose on her nose, hair as bright and as blonde as the sun. A cocksure look and a cocksure stance. Maggie Sawyer all over, that was. Confident woman. Free and clear. Unencumbered, Turpin guessed from years of working side by side, by the past. Her own mistakes. So on and so forth. He admired it about her. Every day.

"Oh. Hadn't planned on it today, Maggie," he said and took a deep draw on the cigar.

She plucked it from his hand and inhaled deeply. Then stubbed it out in the ashtray. "You smoke too much. Watcha got for me?"

"Nothing," he said, "and lots of it. Usually there's a pattern to this kinda thing. It's weird. Good weird, I mean, but weird all the same. Even with Luthor."

"He's a clever man," she said. "But not stupid. He doesn't just give you the answers to the test, Dan."

"Thanks, Ma."

Another cocksure look from her.

"I'm getting there, alright?"

"I know," she said. "You're a good detective. You're even good in a fight. I think Kiernan can attest to that."

He smiled; withered creases turned upward. "Yeah, that was good."

"And," she said. "I won't even tell you what we need to push forward. We've been trying to put him away for years now."

"Kiernan?"

She slapped him lightly upside the head. "No, you big ape. Luthor."

"Well," Turpin said and looked at his journalistic spread. "This helps your cause?"

She leant in and kissed him on the forehead. "It does. I'm glad you took this one, Dan. You've got the mind for it. Don't let Kiernan or anyone else tell you different."

"It's my last hurrah, Mags, don't let em kid you."

"Dan," she said and smiled easy at him. "World already knows what you're made of. So you tell me. Friend to friend. Is there anything there that gets us to LexCorp with a warrant today?"

Turpin leaned back in his chair. Steepled his fingers over his fat gut and thought about it.

"Well. Berkowitz is dead. Could look into that."

Sawyer was dismissive. "Yesterday's news. What else."

"Olsen murder?"

"Positively ancient. And the ACLU is all over it, they think it was a hate crime. I'd like something that puts Luthor in cuffs today."

Turpin made a face. "Well, what about his whereabouts during that Brainiac business way back when. Alien robot shows up, tramples his rose garden and Luthor's nowhere to be seen?"

Another easy smile. She was enjoying this. "The absence of proof is not proof."

"True," he said. "Time was, though, every idiot in this town knew Lex Luthor from Adam. Now he's like a recluse. Who knows what he's doing up there? I don't like it. And I don't like his stupid face."

"Well, I'm sure he doesn't like yours either." She smiled and turned back for her office.

Turpin watched her. His jowls curled up into a half-smile. He chuckled and went back to his coat.

"Turpin. Sawyer. My office."

The voice belonged to Kiernan, the duty chief, former Commissioner, stepped down years ago after some business Turpin had conducted with a muk-muk named Kalibak. Leaning against the doorjam to Henderson's office in a smart grey suit, three piece, a bright white shirt underneath and a grey and red slim tie pinned neatly. Blond hair smooth over his head. Young, Kiernan, but old. Well. Aged beyond his years was more like it. Being commissioner he'd said was like dog years. So he left, and gave it over to Bill Henderson. Henderson seemed more in tune with it, to his credit. More in tune and actually enjoying it.

Turpin made a face and stood. Sawyer trailed him a second later.

_Commissioner_, he thought. _Power and responsibility. No thank you._

Kiernan sat on the edge of Henderson's desk. Henderson sat behind in a rich leather chair, hands clasped together in his lap, his uniform crisp and even; he filled it out expertly. Handlebar moustache crisp and even on an ancient, weathered face. Deep set eyes, glowing blue underneath bushy white eyebrows. Old and young, all at once.

"I just got a call from our National Guard outpost down Fort Bridwell," Henderson said. "Seems something just wiped out one of their border cruisers, out past the old oil rigs."

Turpin raised an eyebrow. "Something," he said and drew it out.

"Something," Henderson said.

Sawyer said, "Witnesses on the rigs? Survivors?"

Kiernan chimed in: "Afraid not. But General Lane—"

An explosion cut him off. Oh, not anything within the SCU. More distant and yet somehow louder. The blast echoing up the street. They stood and went to the bay window behind Henderson's desk. And gaped.

On the other side of the glass was Fifth Avenue.

And a smoking crater in front of LexCorp where the replacement juvenile redwood had just been atomised along with everything else in twenty meters around it. Ashen earth, fire and rubble. And a…thing…standing at the centre of it.

Kiernan squinted.

A man. No—a group of them in a tight circle.

Sawyer said, "Son of a bitch."

Turpin made a sound. Looked at Kiernan. "I'm not impressed."

Henderson dithered. "Matt, hand me my binocs—thanks." He popped them up in front of his eyes and got a better look. Two guys. In the signature green and purple gaudiness that were Team Luthor power-suits. LexoSkeletons, as the _Ledger_ was fond of calling them.

A moment later the thundercloud that had hovered over LexCorp all day bellowed and split open in a paroxysm of electrical fire. They kept watching as Brainiac's Skull Ship wrenched its way out of the cloud. Probing, snaking steel tentacles, brilliant red orbs for eyes and glowing green latticework on a massive skull. The Team Luthor crew started firing on the city. The Skull Ship's eyes ignited and fired twin paths of fire up the street.

The civilians, ordinary people going about ordinary stupid things, never had a chance.

Turpin made a face.

"I smell a rat," Sawyer said.

"I smell Luthor," Kiernan said. "I wondered if the old man was still kicking about up there. Looks like his old Injustice Gang buddies are still kicking too.""

"Baloney," Turpin said. "They're all dead or in lock-up. Hasn't been a super-creep on the streets in years. Unless you read the Sunday _Star_, I guess."

"That's enough," Kiernan said.

"Gentlemen," Henderson said and retrieved his sidearm from his desk drawer. "Lady. We have a job to do. Matt, call everyone in. Maggie, Dan, you're with me."

* * *

**Allen**.

I'm looking at the sky.

The streets are empty, or soon will be. Brainiac drones are screaming up Fifth Avenue and across Siegel.

Jesse is standing next to me. We're wearing Team Luthor LexoSkeletons. Purple and green monstrosities. He is becoming a Cyborg. A hideous fusion of man and machin right now, shortly just a machine. Luthor cured his limp at the cost of his humanity. He's taking it pretty well.

Sirens within earshot, barrelling toward us and the crater Brainiac's reverting Skull Ship has just made in front of the LexTower. Wiping out the juvenile redwood, already hundreds of years older than Metropolis itself, now atomised and scattered on the wind. Like promises. Like memories.

Sirens. Police cars. Fire engines and EMS behind them. Somewhere above us, in his Tower, at his desk, Luthor is watching. Watching two of his protégés in clown suits. And Brainiac, the World Computer that is pretty much as godlike as Superman by this point. Watching us destroy this city.

"The suit knows what to do," Jesse says. "Brainiac built them."

"I don't care," I say. It comes easy and airy. By now I do not even have the capacity to make decisions.

The police cars stop three blocks away. Helmet on. HUD up. Zoom in.

Turpin. Henderson. Kiernan. Sawyer. That's just the lead car. The rest of the SCU storms out of a paddy wagon, along with SWAT. I hear a faint helicopter hum and imagine I smell diesel fuel on the wind. But it's an illusion. Like so much of this world.

Turpin and Sawyer and hiding behind opened car doors and SWAT shields, pointing little guns at me.

I don't know why I'm here. I want to walk up to them and take their guns and shoot myself in the head. Do their jobs for them.

I was going to be so much more.

"Allen," Jesse says.

I look at him. He looks right back.

"This is a bad time for this. But I love you. And I always have."

Then he kisses me.

I return it.

Then flips his helmet down and fires electric fire into the nearest sport utility.

And I follow. Minutes later, the rest of Team Luthor files from the Tower to join us. They take to the skies and fire on the buildings. The Skull Ship and its drones turn Fifth Avenue into a war zone. Is it hyperbole if it's the truth?

Smoke billowed from every overturned car, trickled from the charred bones of every unlucky civilian that used to exist. Debris. Flotsam and jetsam raining from the skies—buildings on fire from the top down.

Jesse and I moved forward.

The suit knows what to do.

So I let it. I flip the helmet down and select Auto-Run on the HUD. It controls my legs and arms. It fires upon every cop car and cop and EMT it can find. It blasts Dan Turpin's patrol car clean away from him and leaves the man himself a dirty, muddled mess on the pavement. It vaporises benches and bus-stops and mailboxes and hydrants.

Sawyer is screaming at Henderson, Henderson is screaming into his radio, begging the SCU to fire their big stupid science weapons. Chatter from the rest of Team Luthor in the suit's onboard systems. I look beside me. Jesse is motionless near an overturned sport utility.

Then a shadow falls over Fifth Avenue. And we all stop what we're doing.

A tidal waves caroms onto our warzone from Siegel, throwing up cars and bodies in its surge, extinguishing fires, levelling out and staying still just below the Skull Ship.

A man in a black wetsuit comes of the water. A black wetsuit and a giant chrome helmet with glowing red orbs for eyes.

He holds a trident in one hand that's too big for both hands. Brandishes it in the air. And points it at Turpin and the rest of Metropolis' finest waiting behind.

Out of the water wall they come. Identical to the man in the chrome helmet, they are, and firing immediately.

Turpin reloaded. Uttered obscenities. And started firing.

Sawyer joined him, her own 9mm doing its best. Kiernan at her side now, with a double-barrel, the three of them in a line and facing the water wall and its attacking hordes.

I switch the suit to manual, and I turn Lex's prodigious weaponry on the water wall.

Jesse joins me.

The wetsuit troops mow down easily. Above us, the Brainiac drones keep destroying the city. Beat cops and the Science Police and the rest of the SCU fire wildly at the wetsuit men, and the drones.

Turpin and Sawyer bark into their radios and fire on the attackers. Cars explode, upend, fly into the air when gas tanks explode. ABove us, buildings smoke from impossible heights and people wave frantically for help.

Fire hydrants caught in flank shots explode and blow water on the street. Mud. Grime filth. Smoke pours in the streets, the wages of devastation.

Howls of dying people, wounded and broken by unreality—how does this happen?

And then the wave undulates closer to us. The leader in the chrome helmet steps down on human level.

He points a finger at Turpin. "You," he says.

"Yeah me," Turpin says and points his gun in the man's crotch.

"I am Black Manta," the man said. "Your new lord and master."

Turpin just says, "Fat chance," and hits the Black Manta in one of the eye sockets. Sawyer and Kiernan stop. He totters, but does not lose himself. He looks back at Turpin and levels the trident at the detective's overweight belly. "Idiot," Manta says. And punches Turpin back.

Sawyer and Kiernan open fire on him. He stumbles back, seeking cover behind theirs quad car. Raises one arm, and the water wall splashes to life again.

He means to bring it down on us. Wash us all away like rats.

We deserve it.

And then something else happens. Time slows but that's only a narrative trick. Sawyer and Turpin and Kiernan stop firing at Manta. Manta raises the trident and two of his retinue flock to him, arcing out of the sky in a grand flourish.

Turpin picks one of them off with a shot to the chest. Kiernan brings the other down in a few shots. They land, dead and ignominious, around us.

I know why Luthor put us in the suits now.

Black Manta's eyepieces glow even more.

Turpin doesn't move.

Luthor required witnesses. This is his last war. The final straw before Brainiac commits nuclear holocaust and wipes out the human race in favour of a new machine paradigm.

"This is our world!" Manta bellows, and moves to bring the wall down on us.

But then, he doesn't.

High above us, in the middle of Fifth Avenue, or forty feet above it, amid Brainiac drones cleansing the city—a flash of light. A second sun. Big as life. A tube of white light, white hot energy, rage perhaps from some cosmic beast, yawning from some unknown source. Look. Squint. Focus.

No. No beast, and no unknown source. This one was common. All too known. The figure stood on the edge of the tube of light, the edge of perception and reality, and of reason. He stood silent and motionless as he watched his city burn.

And slowly, with clear burdensome intent on his face and a slow deliberate rhythm in his movement—

Superman returned.

* * *

_**Continued...**_


	10. A Planet Called Hope

**Excerpt:  
**Kal Kent et al., _A Living History of the 31st Century_ (Oa: CE 853, 900):

"According to historians, the World Conqueror Brainiac had disappeared at the end of the so-called Age of Superheroes, roughly analogous to the Earth year 2013, after a tense showdown with our ancestor Kal-El of Krypton in the streets of Metropolis. Somewhat fortunate for the historical record, however, this was not to be the end of Brainiac. The supercomputer's nominal legacy lived on in its own descendant, Querl Dox of the 31st Century Legion of Superheroes and once-curator of the Kal-El Legacy Exhibition. A more physical representation came about in the second decade of the 31st century when a Brainiac, having been unseen and largely forgotten about since its disappearance in CE 2013, reverted from a hyperspatial jump outside then-Legion headquarters, seeking the eradication of Dox, its own ancestor.

Ostensibly, Legion records tell us, this was an effort on Brainiac's part (hereafter Brainiac-Prime) to collapse its own past and future into itself: an omni-mind with which it might once again take up the conquest of the universe. That concept, of course, had roots in the late XX century Legion of Doom on Earth, a group under the leadership of the human Lex Luthor (about whom we know virtually nothing) which fought its way across dozens of incarnations of the Justice League of America—the Legion's own spiritual forebear. Further research on the human named Luthor, in accordance with the 852,947 CE ban on time-travel for the sake of historical research, has as of this writing proved unsuccessful. Given technological ebbs and flows, however, this is not wholly surprising. Moreover it points to a lack of fuller research, and an intelligent pedagogy regarding the Age of Superheroes: the study of its leaders, major players, decisive moments and eventual end. For if history is the cycle of ebbs and flows—less 'repeating itself' and more merely rhyming as popular rhetoric goes—then our record of our own history possesses significant gaps. We would do well as scholars to research these men and events more closely and carefully. In so doing—the cataloguing of our beginnings, our very roots—we begin to catalogue our futures..."

* * *

**Allen.**

**Now.**

You know heroes. They make themselves known.

So do the villains. Haughty men with nice voices and pleasant smiles who tell you the beloved truth and then let you decide what to do with it. They don't need to recruit you, because logic and rhetoric do it for them. Existence itself proves them right. Because—we live in an unfair world. An inequitable little universe that doesn't give us what we want.

I'm twenty-six years old. Standing in the ruins of Fifth Avenue, in Metropolis, in America, in the world, in the universe. Watching the end of all things. I'm near the end of my life. I can feel it. Can you imagine that? Feeling your own end.

But I'm not. Wasn't. Am not.

Which is why I'm writing this—long after this fight, to be sure, and so leaving a record. A fragmentary account. Of the world that used to be.

One we all helped limp toward its own death.

Brainiac's drones burning this city to the ground: faceless copies of the World Conqueror—Luthor's ally—storming up and down every street in the city. Burning all they see. Killing anyone they come across.

My old friend, Jesse Wright, and myself. Standing here in Team Luthor battle armour, watching it. And we're not even sure why…

Dan Turpin and Maggie Sawyer and Matt Kiernan and the Science Police and the Special Crimes Unit fired into the maelstrom. Trying to make order from this chaos.

Black Manta and his Black Legion, his private army, lay siege to whatever Brainiac doesn't. It's Manta on whom Turpin and his boys spent their time. An occasional shot at one of the drones passing overhead. An occasional retreat behind their gaggle of squad car barriers to rethink and then re-attack—the only strategy Turpin knows. Mostly, though, it's Black Manta, Aquaman's oldest and deadliest foe, commanding a hydrokinetic trident, and using it cleanse this city of all life.

Stagg Laboratories exploded behind me.

Up the street rioters threw flaming liquor bottles at cops that weren't even trying to stop them.

Looters pillaged a Premium Purchase, carrying out televisions bigger than themselves, fuelled through the chaos by greed and opportunity. Beat cops chased down drones and the Black Legionnaires in vain, shooting their sad little handguns at them. They may as well have thrown dirt.

And then it all stopped.

A flash in the sky.

The Legionnaires stop. Manta stops. Shit for brains looters stop, in the middle of strip-mining Schonenfeld's and Sundoller Coffee. Kiernan and Turpin and Sawyer stop.

We all stop.

And look up at the source.

Superman.

Standing at the edge of infinity.

He surveyed the devastation, a perfect non-expression on his face. Not angry, not sad, not pissed, not depressed. Just. Looking. The smoke piling out of Stagg Laboratories. The rows of police cars Turpin and Kiernan are using as shields from Manta and his Legion.

Manta's water wall.

He scowled.

And he went straight for Black Manta.

More precisely, he was upon Black Manta before Black Manta knew what to do or how to react. The water wall collapsed into nothing, receded back to the docks and liveries and sewers where it came from.

Superman floated. Hovered. Too godlike, perhaps, too prideful, too enraged to touch the ground like the rest of us.

He looked at Manta.

"You're Luthor's boy, now?"

Manta's eyepieces fired twin brilliances at Superman.

And he just blocked them. One handed. An afterthought. Ripped the chrome helmet off with the other.

Underneath the human face of Manta quivered, either fear or rage behind it. Even Manta was not sure anymore. Not sure why he was here.

Superman tossed the helmet aside.

Manta choked something out. "Le—Legion! Kill him! Don't let this end!"

So they did. None of us could tell how many are left. Ten, maybe twenty, but they turned their fire on Turpin and his car-shields. Sawyer produces a bigger sidearm from her trenchcoat. Kiernan switched out his double-barrel for twin nine-mills. Turpin—Turpin just reloaded.

Jesse and I hovered to Turpin's side and returned fire: the suits contained arm-mounted railguns. Closest comparison there is. Like Desert Eagles. Smaller, more compact—harder firing and harder kick. They seemed to stun the Legionnaires pretty well.

Turpin screamed at us over the din, over the maelstrom: "You guys quit the old man or what?"

Jesse said, "Things are working a little different now."

We kept firing. The Legionnaires fanned out, rose into the sky on their jetpacks. No doubt they're also Brainiac designs.

Ahead of us, Manta screamed. And fired the trident into Superman's face. Golden white electrosizzle exploded all around Superman and Aquaman's archenemy, for a moment bright and blinding.

Superman fell back, stunned.

Manta, blinded, fired indiscriminately around himself. Electric fire exploded into the Special Crimes Unit, into Turpin's boys, igniting their cars, creating meters-high fireballs, burning storefronts, fleeing civilians, any detritus unlucky enough to get in the way. Manta burned a ring of fire around himself, waving the trident wildly with one hand and swinging the other in random circles. A drunken boxer at the end of his match.

The cops retreated again. Jesse yelled at me, "get down!" and kept firing.

I didn't get down. I put a hand on Turpin's shoulder, on a sooty, scorched and frayed suit jacket, and forced him down. I stood there and watched Black Manta hold Superman at bay, to the man's credit, for minutes. Watched Black Manta shoot electric fire from that trident indiscriminately all around him. He may have expected Superman's return—but maybe not in this manner. Maybe.

And so here, at the end of the world, Black Manta was losing his mind.

The fire from the staff struck buildings, cars, asphalt already cracked and broken under us. It shot into the sky, into the dark façade of the LexTower down the block.

And into Jesse.

He fell to the ground in an inhuman yelp.

Superman found an opening in Manta's reeling, random attack, and took the staff from him. I heard a scuffle, but I didn't care.

Tell yourself that. Tell yourself you have a choice. That you don't care about the people in your life. Tell yourself that living is making a choice—and living with it. Hardest thing of all.

I ran over to Jesse's side.

The street was quiet. Distantly, there were gunshots and sirens. EMS, fire crews, and police. Something exploded north of us. Smoke plumed into the sky around us. Gloom settled over Fifth Avenue.

He was dying.

I knelt beside him. He lay on the asphalt in this warzone, writhing, dying. He pressed a button on the cuff of the suit—and its panels shunted off him in stunted pneumatic gasps.

And then he was just lying there in his boxers, slim and beautiful. A broad, tanned chest with a smoking crater in the centre, turning into shining chrome and steel parts below his ribcage, parts sputtering and sparking as they die. Failed technoconversion.

"Jesse." A hurried breathless whisper. There were—and are—no words for it, really.

"Allen, I. Oh. Oh. I've been shot."

"I know, I didn't see him."

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does."

"It really doesn't. Stop blaming yourself. For my…my mistakes."

"You're. You're gonna be okay. Okay?"

"Shut up."

"I mean it."

"No," he said and gasped it, wheezed it out through dry, dying lips. "It's—. Don't worry, Allen. Alright? Don't worry."

"I'm sorry."

Through teary eyes, Jesse gulped and sucked in weak breaths.

"I was in love with you," he wheezes. "It's. My fault. My fault…Oh. Don't you see, Allen?"

"What? See what?"

He closed his eyes and laid back. Relaxed on the pavement. His breathing smoothed.

"There's a wall, Allen. It separates what was from what is. End from Source. So high you can't go over. So. So wide you can't go around. The only way. Is to go through."

Jesse's voice relaxed. He stopped trembling. He lay back and breathed freely. "The source," he said. "Of everything we are. Of the world that is to come."

He lifted one hand, quivering, trembling, pale and lifeless, and laid it on my cheek, soft skin and prominent cheekbones under a false suntan.

"Everything we are," he said again. "I will see you there, Allen. There at the wall."

"Jesse."

Then Jesse Wright said good-by.

It was hardly a whisper.

A shadow fell over me.

"Allen," it said.

I turned, pivoted on one ankle and looked up. The shadow was Superman. A sad and dismal look on his face. He laid a hand on my shoulder.

"You," I said. "You. Remember me?"

"I remember everyone," he said. And looked at Jesse's corpse. "Earn this, Allen. Earn it. Don't waste your life."

He turned and walked away.

I stood.

Behind us, the streets had calmed. I looked at the remnants of the SCU. Meters afield, Turpin and his boys were cleaning up. I looked back at Superman as he walked down the street toward LexCorp and the Skull Ship hovering before it.

"Wait," I called after him.

He stops.

"What are you doing, Superman?"

He cocked his head to one side. "Tell Turpin. They're looting over on Shuster. People are using this chaos to kill each other in Suicide Slum. Riots. Men with guns. Civilians. Tell him to get on it."

"What are you going to do?"

He looked back the Skull Ship. And said, "I'll think of something."

He rose into the air, floated up the Skull Ship's enormous face.

And out of my sight.

* * *

**Superman.**

**Now.**

He rose up to the Skull Ship and stopped, hovered, before the mouth. Enormous artificial, skeletal teeth cracked at their seams and opened. The ship yawned, bathing the Man of Steel in brilliant green light. Years ago, decades really, he might have fallen back on instinct—you see green light once from a rock in Luthor's hand and you don't think it's anything, and then you're laid up sick for a week with a weak form of radiation poisoning. But this? No. Not kryptonite. Just green light. The signature of Brainiac.

And a moment later, the World Computer himself. Itself.

The robot in the shape of a humanoid skeleton. Dark steel and Nth and other metals humans ad Superman alike didn't have names for comprising his form. Hands clasped conspiratorially behind its back. Inhuman eye slits, Nth metal to the core, narrowed, bulbous head with its honeycomb latticework held high. Smugness from a robot. Of all things.

Superman folded his arms over the shield on his chest. And when he spoke he spoke plainly, seriously. No ill inflection, no wit, no sarcasm or terror or complaint. Just this. Just the two of them.

The last survivor of a dead world, and the last omnicide in the universe.

"Brainiac."

"Kal-El."

He breathed deep and composed himself.

Superman hovered closer to Brainiac. Stared into inhuman green eyes.

And he was wrong.

Vril Dox was in there. A micro-sample, so small it could be said not to have existed at all. A single neuron. Encased and sealed and boxed and locked away deep in Brainiac's skull-carapace.

The biological inside.

Full of rage.

He saw it in that dark, unnatural face made of metals humans have never heard of. Narrow green eyes, glowing brighter as they narrowed. A skeletal countenance, frowning, raging, at existence itself.

Brainiac raised its head and clasped skeleton hands behind its back.

He looked at Superman proudly, vainly. Emotions, at last.

And Superman shut down Brainiac's vanity with four words. Just four.

Four is enough.

"Well," he said.

And felt pride. Of all the things to feel here, in this moment, in this street, in this city.

In this moment—

Kal-El of Krypton had been totally deprived. Of his career, of his spouse, his well-being, his sense of self, his friends and colleagues.

And yet.

And yet.

Here he was.

Brainiac turned inward-

It had spent eons building itself up, suppressing organics. Suppressing emotions. Pain, hope, love, fear, malice. It did not need to hate other beings, for superiority far outclassed jealousy or rage. It did not need to pity them, for compassion was a weakness which it did not share with its creators. No. Brainiac was simply meant to be more. Better. Evolved. It meant to create for itself, and in itself, everything machine life—evolved intelligence—could be. Could do. It was supposed to be, and encompass, and do, the best of all possible things. For all possible worlds. A tempered, rational response to an untempered organic universe in schism with itself.

It had failed. The instant the World Computer came to Luthor's planet, consorted with the humans, learned their petty jealousies and fostered them among the population's superhuman number...it failed.

And here, of all places, in this moment, in this street. In this city...

It lashed out with rage that was only too human—

"Here I am," Superman said.

—And was upon him, lashing out in some unnatural primal rage.

Superman returned it.

He thought of Lois.

And he summoned fury, also from nowhere, pummelling the thin robot shell. He screamed and froze Brainiac's shell, ripped and pulled and shattered it into a thousand icy shards. He opened his eyes wide and burned the frame and his own hands. All of his powers unleashed at once on the World Conqueror. That simple doddering robot.

Screaming, pummelling, burning. Indiscriminate. He screamed and his eyes burned wide and bright, little suns searing, tearing, into Brainiac. Crumpling the Nth like paper, like ice, like old dreams. The honeycomb lattice on the skull winked, brilliantly green, for a moment, and then died. The skeletal face screamed out. The tinny, dying roars of a sentient computer virus screamed down Fifth Avenue.

Time slowed for Superman. Time enough to think.

The _Planet_. And Lois. And Lex. And Brainiac. And the _Planet_. And Jimmy and Perry.

And Lois.

And Bruce.

And Lois.

He stopped.

And stood.

Beneath him, what was Brainiac was a fractured mess of contorted metal and burning circuitry. The head still remained connected to the rest of the body by a quivering, glowing spinal artifice. The diodes on the forehead winked in and out intermittently.

"It was a more perfect union," the World Computer said. His voice sizzled and faded, fluctuating, Superman saw, at every wavelength.

Superman breathed.

"Can you hear me?"

The dying skull managed weakly: "Yes."

Superman knelt beside it.

"I'm sorry, Brainiac."

"I—will—sur-sur-survive—I always survive."

"I know," Superman said. "But not here and not now. And you won't bother anyone again for a good long while."

He yanked the skull free of its spine. The eyes stared at him. Somewhere behind them Superman still imagined Vril Dox was still in there. Maybe.

Superman frowned.

The eyes faded and died out.

He tossed the head aside.

And looked up.

The Skull Ship had already retreated into its storm cloud. Gone. To another shore. Another time, perhaps, a kinder gentler time which Brainiac could abuse with his ubiquity and his terror.

He sighed and looked at the ground.

_Father._

He looked up.

_Why am I doing this?_

The LexTower stood before him. Countless floors high. He'd stopped counting years ago after the latest remodel. He squinted—focus—and it was no good.

"Hm."

Luthor had spent seven years lining the rest of the building with lead. Completely. Nothing in or out. He thought for a moment what Luthor would be like these days. Angry, despondent perhaps. Maybe catatonic. In some shock or coma from the loss of his greatest enemy.

_Father._

He slowed as he neared the roof. Broad glass panels that comprised the walls and slanted roof slide back into the dark steel façade. They revealed an enormous—vacant—office. Beige and moodless and empty. Big as life. Empty as the stars.

And standing near the edge of his own building, proud and tall, his suit flapping in the breeze—

"Lex."

He landed meters away from Luthor and walked toward him. Ever so slowly.

Luthor looked back at him. Smiled weakly. Fondly.

"I took care of Manta," Superman said. "Brainiac, too."

Luthor let out a wisp of air and rolled his eyes. "He'll be back."

"His ship retreated into its vortex. I suspect he's headed for the thirtieth century. His usual hiding place."

Luthor half-turned. Pulled a remote from his pocket and held it up for Superman to see. A wan look on his face. He regarded the remote.

Frowned.

Looked at Superman. "You haven't disarmed me yet."

"No," Superman said. "I thought we could just talk."

"You never want to talk."

Superman cracked a smile. "You never want to listen."

Half of Luthor's mouth curled into a smile.

"It's good to see you."

"And you."

Lex turned away from Superman. Back to the burning cityscape. He sighed.

"I had this building wired for explosives years ago. Thought it might come in handy one day, if I needed a quick escape or something."

Superman waited.

Finally.

"Lex."

Luthor pivoted in place. In a flash he was staring at Superman, holding out one hand, ticking his finger back and forth, and clutching the remote in the other.

"That's far enough, Superman."

The Man of Steel breathed. And stopped.

Luthor sneered. "What are you even afraid of? If I destroy this building, you'll survive. You always survive."

Superman looked down. "Not always."

"Don't remind me," Luthor said. Looked at the sky. "Look at the mockery I made of your world. I brought Berkowitz back from the dead and made him sit there while I finally shut down the _Daily_ _Planet_. I had the old Legion get real and wipe out your friends in the Justice League. I took everything from you. Everything." He looked at Superman. "How do you come back from that, Kent?"

"People," Superman said. "Are stronger than they seem."

Luthor smiled, small and fond. "Takes an outsider to see it, I suppose."

"Lex."

Luthor looked up.

Sad and plaintive, an echo, Superman said, "Imagine. Just think what could have been. If we'd…if things had been different."

Luthor's eyes narrowed. "Different."

_Father._

_Who do I have in my life?_

"I thought you never needed me," Superman said. "That our rivalry was voluntary. I thought I understood why we fought for all those years. And I thought maybe once I left, you'd move on. I was wrong."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Superman said. "Don't you see, Lex? We don't need to do this anymore."

Luthor waited. His face turned sullen.

The wind scoured the roof.

"I hate you," Luthor said. Barely wheezed it. "You and your sick fantasy. Making them all love you. When it should have been me. I saved this city once, and after I had you sent away I did it again. Listen to those sirens, Superman. Use your powers. Those people don't need you. I built this tower, and put my office on the top floor. So I could look down on them. On every last knuckle-dragging chimpanzee down there, and then you show up! Standing just above me. Smugly. I spent years and billions trying to help people understand they didn't need saving. Not from you. My city. My city. I made it, Kent. Not you. And you're the one they love most. What did you do for them?! What did you give them!? I want to know! TELL ME!"

"Lex."

"Tell me, goddammit! Why do they love you?! WHAT IS IT?! What do they see in you, you simpering alien garbage! What do you offer them that I can't?!"

Superman looked at the streets below. Fire crews storming up the remnants of Fifth Avenue. The SCU reinstating order in the rioted-out parts of Suicide Slum. Turpin and Kiernan and Sawyer—Superman squinted and saw them, clear as day. Big as life. Shaking hands with one another. Coming out the other side of war. Survivors. Their heroism the difference.

_Old friends._

_Reminders. Better days gone by._

He watched Turpin and Sawyer and Kiernan check their numbers and their men, and call squads from Fifth up to Fortieth Street. He saw them shaking their hands, patting their backs, thanking and wipe grimy brows and sigh heavy smokers' breaths and laugh at outlasting their own ends. Humans, he thought.

And thought of his father.

And Bruce.

And Lois.

Always Lois.

Luthor had a point. In a way.

These people.

_Father._

_He is right._

_They can find their own way…_

Superman smiled. And said, "Hope."

He looked back—

"I offered them hope, Lex. That's all they need."

Luthor was looking at the city too. Dumbstruck. Silent, dour expression. Thinking. Not understanding the people on display below.

One of Luthor's hands froze in the air, slack but stuck in the same pose he'd had it when first showing the remote to Superman.

Superman put one hand out—

"Lex."

Luthor looked back at him.

Man to man.

"You're right. They can find their own way. They're going to have to. So. Do it. Press a button. Press that button. Take my life."

—Closed it over Luthor's, and the remote.

A hundred storeys below, the first charges went off. Distant thunder.

The floor shook underneath them.

The charges continued up the tower. Louder, more unstable.

The floor listed and wobbled. Emperador marble buckled and snapped under gravity's pull.

And slowly, very slowly, they fell.

They kept their eyes on each other. And fell. Until the smoke and the fire and the blackness overcame them both. Until their hands separated and they fell away from each other. Lost in the coming abyss.

Lost to their world.

And to all worlds.

* * *

**Allen.**

**Soon.**

We go through life with some imbued sense of endings. School begins here, ends there. Same for college, same for infectious diseases too. Same for marriages. You meet, you court, you marry, and then one day it's over, either by death or by lawyer. We think of endings. We think this is all finite. And what seems more fanciful, and more horrifying, is that sometimes it continues. Sometimes we keep going. Sometimes you can't even kill yourself the way you want—and so you live. Yes, you live.

Still, we think life ends. We think of our roles in this world, in this universe, as starting and stopping. Blame media, if you want. Or blame something more abstract, like perceptions and the smallness of the human brain. Its inability to think outside itself. Perhaps there is no blame. Perhaps there's just us, here on the Earth. Living. That's fate enough. And what I think we miss, what our little human brains miss, is that, you know, life doesn't really end. Not in the way we think at least. It goes on. The story always has another page. It ends when you want it to. You try to make it the bet you can. You do everything you can. To ensure the best results.

Do everything you can. Tell yourself that. Do the best you could. And keep going.

They never found Luthor. And I guess they never will.

Ditto for Superman.

State police claimed Jesse's body. I didn't stop them.

I stayed at the LexCorp site into the next morning, and a grey rain sweeping over the city. Fire crews, what was left of the Special Crimes Unit and the Science Police, Turpin and Sawyer down there directing clean-up. And there was a lot of it. Mangled girders themselves sky-high, fallen from the positively cyclopean LexTower in its final rattling death-throes. Piles of concrete. Shattered glass and steel and stone for blocks around.

A chill wind scoured the site. Firemen hunkered in their gear and kept spraying the flames. A small crowd gathered behind sawhorse barriers.

Turpin yelling through a bullhorn at everyone. Go Home Nothing To See Here.

Yeah. Right.

One thing you can't order people to do, Turpin: stop them caring.

And it is caring, I think. A very fractured sort of public caring, which you might also call snooping or gossip. Peyton Place alive and well.

The fire crews and the SCU called it quits at seven the next morning. Next day the _Ledger_, the _Post_ and the _Daily Star_ published editorials on the collapse, and on Luthor's Last War—though only the _Ledger_ dared call it that. WGBS and GCN ran all-day features on it. Fox, CBS, GNN. Crisis in Metropolis. The Fall of Metropolis. Panic in the Streets.

All the sensationalism.

None of them knew the truth. A good thing, all things considered. And so it all passed into legend very quickly.

I returned to my apartment that morning and packed a slim duffel bag. Slung it over my shoulder. Left the safety deposit on the kitchen counter, in hundred dollar bills, along with my keys. And—

I was packing up my bureau when I saw it. An envelope, in my underwear drawer. My heart started racing, in a good way if you can believe that. Yes, a good way. A different way.

I dropped the duffel on the floor and pried the envelope open with two fingers. It opened softly. The contours of expensive, smooth paper danced under my fingers. I imagined I could feel the grooves of the quill pen. And it was quill, or I thought. Nothing else writes so deep and so masterfully. I read it twice:

_ Dear Allen, _

_I hope that you've found this letter, and that it has found you. When I told you not to waste your life, I meant it. First things first though. You have my deepest apologies for the mess both Lex and I have made of your life, your friend's life, and the life of this city. When or if you read this letter, take a look at the address below. I encourage you to follow it, and if you do, to stand with me once you get there. I hope to see you on the other side, and stand together at the dawn of a new world._

_Kindest personal regards,_  
_ Clark Kent_

The address he gave was simple enough. The rest of this story is, too, I suppose. I got a rental car from one of the last games in town. One of the old kinds, with GPS in the dash. Input the address.

And I drove. For days. Most of that trip has passed from my memory. Suffice it to say a cross-country trip just doesn't get you what it used to. But the destination was worth it. I can tell you that right now.

Luthor, like Gatsby, like Superman, believed in a bright tomorrow. Brighter. An orgy of technology and human achievement shining the planet Earth's name through time and space. This is what humans can do. A mongrel little species—and yet how brilliant? How creative and forward, these beasts.

I wonder if they'll write that. About us. Years from now. Centuries from now. How they'll look at us. If at all. I wonder what they'll say of we humans who lived in the Age of Superheroes? What it must have looked like. Why it ended.

The address was in rural Kansas. Osage County, north where the fields stretch so far into the horizon that you could almost say it's fake, it's a soundstage, that it's not real. Oh but it is. And was. And is. Far amber fields under a bright blue sky.

The GPS said Turn Right In Five Hundred Feet.

So I did.

Up a straight and narrow gravel lane, the tyres humming and bumping beneath the car, gravel kicking out into the berm, a plume of dust swaying on the wind out over the wheat.

I turned the GPS off.

Ahead lay a squat and proper farmhouse, blue shudders and white siding and a paper roof, incompletely shingled, but getting there. Getting there.

A Farmall the colour of bight cherries sitting in a gravel turnout. A bright red barn and a grey tin roof on it by pieces. And next to it, inside it, around it. Littering the farm in a thousand different directions. Combines and tractors and planters and gravity wagons and trucks. Cows grazing in the field. Chickens ambling about in the dirt.

All you'd need. For a new world.

One without Superman.

A farm. And a barn. And a man on a ladder. Reshingling the roof the old fashioned way, a hammer in one hand and a spike of nails in his free hand. Shingling, and then stopping to wave at me. Putting his hammer on a flat ladder rung and walking over and shaking my hand and introducing himself—

My name is Clark.

Yes, I know sir. It's an honor.

Honor's mine—

And it is.

I can see it all. The farm, the fields, the rooster strutting around, the house. Clear as day. Clear as I write this. I see it in my mind's eye when I go to sleep at night, comfortable and calm. I see it in the warmth of his presence, and the warmth of his voice. That soft, flat Midwestern brogue, flowing free and easy from a man brave enough to leave an old life behind. Brave enough to be free. More, to choose freedom. And maybe—

Like I said.

We think of our lives as a series of endings. Start and stop. Stop and go. We think this all ends. But. Maybe. Just maybe. Maybe…there are no ends. Sometimes life goes on. The story always has another page.

It ends when you want it to.

He motions toward the house and we walk toward it slowly, peacefully. He asks me how everything's going. He talks about the wheat and how next year he might put corn in instead. He says he's going to try and help an old friend of his named Hank, and asks me if I'd like to lend a hand. I tell him it'd be my honor. And when he asks me if I'm ready for the world that is to come—

Yes.

We'll make it, he tells me.

Here.

Together.

* * *

**_The End_**

**_March 2012—February 2013_**

Nearly every part of this story came from some other place, some thematic source that helped immeasurably in the telling. Here are some:

Battlestar Galactica 'Reimagined'/2005. House MD. Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'The Best of Both Worlds'. Doctor Who serials: 'Tomb of the Cybermen', 'Trial of a Time Lord', 'The Happiness Patrol', 'Closing Time'. 'The End of Time', 'The Girl in the Fireplace'. Blade Runner. Superman 1978. Batman 1989. The Dark Knight Rises. Challenge of the Superfriends. Batman the Animated Series. Superman the Animated Series. Justice League. Justice League Unlimited. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Starship Troopers. Mallrats. Chasing Amy. The Devil's Advocate. The Simpsons.

_The Iliad_, by Homer. _The Odyssey_, by Homer. _The Aeneid_, by Virgil. _Othello_, by William Shakespeare. _Paradise Lost_, by John Milton. _The Pilgrim's Progress_, by John Bunyan. _Moby-Dick_, by Herman Melville. _Peyton Place_, by Grace Metalious. _Pontoon_, by Garrison Keillor. _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, _Time Enough for Love_, _Starship Troopers_, _Stranger in a Strange Land_ - all by Robert A Heinlein. _Snow Crash_, by Neal Stephenson. _The War of the Worlds_, by HG Wells. Star Wars Republic Commando novels by Karen Traviss. _It's Superman!_ by Tom DeHaven. _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_, by Michael Chabon. _The Great Gatsby_, by F Scott Fitzgerald. _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_, by Stephen Chbosky. _Jurassic Park_, by Michael Crichton. _Prey_, by Michael Crichton. _Catcher in the Rye_, by JD Salinger.

_All-Star Superman_. _All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder_. _The Dark Knight Returns_. _The Dark Knight Strikes Again_. _Batman: Year One_. _Batman: Tales of the Demon_. _Batman: Knightfall. Batman: No Man's Land_. _Batman: The Killing Joke_. _Superman For Tomorrow_. _Superman: Under a Yellow Sun_. _Lex Luthor: The Unauthorised Biography_. _Superman: They Saved Luthor's Brain!_ The Death and Return of Superman. _Superman: The Man of Steel_, by John Byrne. _Superman: Exile_. _Luthor_ and _Joker_, both by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. Action Comics #700. Action Comics #800. Action Comics #900. _Superman: Panic in the Sky_! _Superman: Red Son_. _Justice_ by Jim Krueger and Alex Ross. _Aquaman: Time and Tide_. _Aquaman: Death of a Prince_. _JLA: Earth-2_. _JLA: Rock of Ages_. _The Legion of Superheroes: The Great Darkness Saga_. _Final Crisis_. Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibi, vols 1-4 (primarily: 'The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin!', 'A Superman in Supertown!', and 'The Hunger Dogs!'). Jack Kirby's OMAC.

And with heartfelt thanks and appreciation for the work of Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, Jonathan Hickman, Greg Rucka (whose novelised form of _Batman: No Man's Land_ inspired me to start writing).

And to Jack Kirby.

Long live the King.

Most of all: to you, Dear Readers.

Thank you.


End file.
